LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



©^ait- - ^mm^ - 

Shelf ..^Mr© 3 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



OCCASIONAL 
SERMONS AND LECTURES 



The Reverend JOHN M. KIELY 



RECTOR 

CHURCH OF THE TRANSFIGURATION 
BROOKLYN, N. Y. 



Insta opportune." 

St. Paul to Timothy 



NEW YORK "''^ 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
1894 



BY 





The Library 
OF CoNHR^ss 



WASHINGTON 



Copyright, 1894, 
By JOHN M. KIELY. 



IMPRIMATUR. 



May 24, i8g4. 



CHARLES EDWARD, 

Bishop of Brooklyn. 



TO 

MY HEAVENLY PATRON, 

SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST, 

ON WHOSE FEAST-DAY, TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, 
I WAS ELEVATED 
TO THE HOLY PRIESTHOOD. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



I. — The Christian family i 

II. — Cornelius Heeney 13 

III. — The music of Ireland 25 

IV. — -The Bible 36 

V. — The Bible (continued) 45 

VI. — The Catholic youth in his home and in society . 56 

VII. — European shrines of Our Lady 65 

VIII. — A seventieth anniversary 83 

IX. — Address to graduates ...... 91 

X. — " Eleventh-hour " laborers . . . . . .98 

XL — The Cross and the Crescent 103 

XII. — A transatlantic holiday. — In Ireland . . . 123 

XIII. — A transatlantic holiday. — Through Europe . . 132 

XIV. — A transatlantic holiday. — At Rome. . . . 139 
XV.— St. Teresa .149 

XVI. — Dedication of a church 162 

XVII. — Church and State 170 

XVIII. — The late poet-laureate 176 

XIX. — The Church and the fine arts 186 

XX. — " The day we celebrate " 209 

XXI. — Poland : her v^rongs 215 

XXIL — European cemeteries and their illustrious dead . 225 

XXIIL — Loyola. — The Jesuits ....... 241 

XXIV. — A " DARK AGES " RETROSPECT 254 

XXV. — The disposal of the dead 263 



THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. 



Delivered hi the Chttrch of the Transfiguration. 

There is a place, dear friends, of all places the dearest 
and the most wistful, where fondest hopes are centered 
and kindliest thoughts find rest ; where ties of love are 
entwined most closely ; a place to which, wander where we 
may, our dearest recollections turn in loving memory ; and 
that place is home, with which, be it ever so humble," no 
other place can compare. In that place, that home, that 
little sanctuary, lives the little group who form the family. 
Four persons may complete its membership. 

I. The FATHER is the head of the family. As God is 
the Father of the human race, man is the father of the 
little family circle — image in miniature of God's great 
Home on high. When a young man takes to his heart the 
wife of his choice he binds himself to make that woman a 
home, where she shall be sole mistress and queen. He 
builds the nest of his life, he lays the foundations of 
home, the root and nucleus of the Christian family. 

And all this should be done in the light of Christian 
faith, prudence, and common sense. The selection of a 
wife is of the last importance to a young man embarking 
on the waves of this world. If he be wise, he will look on 
every young woman only through the eyes of religion, 
purity, and usefulness. He will view matrimony in a 
sacred light, as a sacrament, as a union to be dissolved 
only by death. This done, the first great part of his duty 
is discharged. Then, whether the world treat him kindly 

(0 



2 



THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. 



or coldly, he will be unshaken, remembering that he began 
as a Christian should — with purity of intention and with 
the blessing of God. Ah, if a young man rush hastily into 
marriage without consulting God, or a friend, or a con- 
fessor, he will surely live to regret too late a false step 
taken. If he wed a female in whom he mistook silliness 
for innocence, whose bright face and vain exterior at- 
tracted him, without inquiring into her intellectual, moral, 
or womanly qualities, he has run a vital risk, and may have 
years of labor before him to make a presentable woman of 
the creature he calls wife. 

In his love for mankind God has decreed that his eter- 
nal fatherhood should have its image in humanity ; that 
men should participate in the privileges of his paternal 
dignity; that they should enjoy a fatherhood and be 
blessed with offspring. All paternity is from God." 
And the human father, taking God's place, is the lord and 
guide of his little ones, and has a right to their obedience 
and their honor. Nor is this mere sentiment or Christian 
poetry. It is the very first of the seven commandments 
that tell us our duty toward each other here on earth — 
Honor thy father." Blessings, too, are promised to the 
dutiful and obedient; yea, and curses are pronounced 
against the irreverent, the disobedient, and the ungrateful. 

And as the father is the God-given head of the family, 
it follows that his office is a sacred trust, his duty little 
less than a divine one. On him depends the welfare, tem- 
poral and eternal, of the little ones whom God has given 
him. And they in turn should know that he takes the 
place of God in their regard, in their government, their 
guidance. With what extreme earnestness, then, should 
not the father begin his work of training and of good ex- 
ample ! It goes without saying that nothing in his conduct 
should give scandal to his children. It was a pagan phi- 



THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. 



3 



losopher who wrote, Maxima debetur puero reverentia 
— the greatest reverence is due to the child. Why ? Be- 
cause he is so easily impressed for good or for evil ; be-" 
cause we should reverence the child's innocence. 

From this it is plain that the duties of the father are 
simply sacred, dignified; his name venerable; his ofQce 
more than angelic. He is the molder of his child's soul. 
And this supposes that he makes his children's education 
a labor of love; that he makes his children his daily com- 
panions ; that he takes them out to walk, especially Sun- 
days ; while he daily impresses on them the principles of 
religion and morality so strongly that all the after-assaults 
of irreligious men and of an infidel press could not change 
or weaken them. It supposes him to be a father who stays 
at home at night, and who thinks no place on God's earth 
outside God's own sanctuary more sacred than his own 
dear little home, his hearth, his fireside. 

II, And the mother! She shares equally with the 
father the duties and responsibilities of home life. On 
her depend not only the well-being of her children, but 
the happiness and to a great extent the success of her 
husband. 

It will never be known how large a part woman has 
played in the affairs of this world. It is easily conceded 
that she has been the beginning, the middle, and the end 
of nearly all that is good in human history. And just 
now, more than ever, we have need of good women, valiant 
wives. Christian mothers. We are in sad need of good 
men ; and it is great and good women who fashion good 
men. The germ of all private and public morals is found 
in the family, and the mother is the family's guardian 
angel. She holds the key to its morals and its future 
life. It is said that there never was a good or a great 
man who had not a good or great mother. Nay, more: 



4 



THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. 



there are those who notice that successful men, as a rule, 
are the husbands of clever, prudent. God-fearing wives. 

Be this as it may, it is known that women have acted 
very largely in shaping human events, in molding their 
children into great minds. We have them in Church his- 
tory, from the women who followed the Redeemer and 
stood by his cross when strong men had fled, down to the 
last heroic religious or brave mother of a family who, 
after a life of toil and sacrifice, gave up her soul to God. 
We have them in the mothers of Constantine, Augustine, 
Chrysostom, and St. Louis. Every page of Christian his- 
tory is brightened with the luster of such names as Clo- 
tilda, Elizabeth of Hungary, Elizabeth of Spain, Margaret 
of Scotland, and Joan, the Maid of Orleans." How 
proud we are of the Christian woman when we think of 
Catharine of Siena, without whose aid the papal resi- 
dence might never have been restored to Rome ! Nor 
can we help associating the name of Monica with that of 
Augustine; of Scholastica with that of her brother, St. 
Benedict; of St. Clare with Francis of Assisi ; of Teresa 
with John of the Cross; and of Jane Frances de Chantal 
with St. Francis de Sales. And to-day, how ably seconded 
in their efforts are the hierarchy and priesthood of the 
world by those noble women, in the cloister and out of it, 
whose hearts beat proud and fast and high for the glory 
of God and the salvation of souls ! 

As mother, the woman is the queen of the Christian 
family. She must be pious, and should teach her little 
ones lessons of piety. She need not be ashamed to let 
them see her at prayer, giving alms to the poor, or read- 
ii^^ good books — object-lessons which children never for- 
get. She must be so fond of truth that her children could 
not believe her guilty of a falsehood. She must do what 
she promises, or the little ones will soon lose confidence 



THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. 



s 



in her. She must never correct while in a passion. Wait 
till you are calm and cool, O mother, and let your child 
perceive that you know precisely what you are doing, and 
that you mean to do it. 

As a wife, she is her husband's treasure. When she 
took the ring from his hand at the foot of God's altar 
she promised him undying fidelity — a fidelity as pure as 
the ring's bright gold, as unending as its circle. And in 
order to preserve that virtue from the faintest shadow of 
suspicion, the prudent wife will have no friend, male or 
female, whom her husband does not know and of whom 
he does not approve. If she maintain a speaking ac- 
quaintance even with a female friend against her hus- 
band's wishes, she is acting foolishly and sowing the 
seeds of infinite discord. Yet, hard to say, she must be 
the friend of her husband's friends. Too often it happens 
that a wife will take a notion to dislike her husband's 
friends, offend them even, and thus destroy, perhaps for- 
ever, the peace of her own fireside. 

Needless it is to say she should be her husband's help- 
mate; especially so if they be in poor circumstances, and 
he returns to his home daily after hard toil, weary, and 
naturally expecting welcome, food, and rest. And it is 
for just such circumstances that a woman seems to be 
naturally fitted and prepared, if her heart is in the right 
place. For trials which positively break down a man 
and drive him to utter despair seem to call forth all the 
fiaivete and power of woman. Yes, tender and sensitive 
women, who in prosperity were weak and volatile, and 

''Varying as th* uncertain shade 
By the light quivering aspen made," 

have risen equal to the crisis of adversity and become 
the mainstay of their nearly desperate partners. If she 



6 



THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. 



is all this as a wife, she is sure to be a very gem as a 
mother. 

III. The two other members of the Christian house- 
hold are the son and the daughter. 

The Christian youth, as reason dawns upon him, finds 
himself laden with many weaknesses. A divine spark 
within him tells him that he must be good, and that he 
will live forever. A warring spirit within him — a dark 
spirit, which he hates — inclines him to evil. It is this 
state of things in our fallen nature that necessitates a 
training — that calls for an education in the proper mean- 
ing of the word. The persons naturally appointed to do 
this work are the father and the mother, and they can 
not begin too soon. Those who have experience in the 
rearing of children have observed the beginnings of pas- 
sion in the merest infants. 

The Christian boy, however, whatever his faults, nat- 
urally loves his parents. The feeling is instinctive, and 
it is encouraged when the parent treats him kindly and 
shows him that he is an object of true parental love. Be- 
sides this, the boy should be told how God wishes him to 
love and honor his parents; how God himself became a 
little child, and honored Mary and Joseph, and gave back 
to a widow her dead son, and was kind and gentle to all. 
He should be told the story of Joseph honoring his aged 
father Jacob, in Egypt. He made ready his chariot," 
are the words, and went up to meet his father; and see- 
ing him, he fell upon his neck, and, embracing him, wept.'* 
And of King Solomon, The king arose to meet her [his 
mother], and bowed to her, and sat down upon his throne; 
and a throne was set up for the king's mother, and she sat 
upon his right hand." Nor should the parent forget to 
rehearse the charming story of St. Augustine and St. Louis 
of France, in this regard. 



THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. 



7 



Then comes the all-important period when preparation 
for the sacraments becomes a duty. Sweet duty, yet 
fraught with dangerous importance ! It is here especially 
that the boy will learn, through holy faith, the duties of 
home life, respect and love for parents, honesty, purity, 
truth, and the other virtues looked for in a Christian man. 
This is the time to preclude the possibility of such a thing 
in the Christian home as that species of monster known as 
a spoiled child. To me there is nothing more repulsive 
than a spoiled child. And there is nothing easier than to 
spoil a child. Do not punish the child in the beginning, 
give him his own way, and you are spoiling him. Laugh 
at the smart, unchildlike things he says or does; dress 
him like a little dude; let him interfere in the conversa- 
tion of grown-up people, and even contradict them; listen 
to his complaints against his teachers, and take sides with 
him on all occasions, and you are rearing a spoiled child, 
perhaps thrusting a monster on the world. And such a 
child, it is noticed, is usually an only child. You will sel- 
dom find a spoiled boy in a large young family. 

IV. The DAUGHTER is the fourth member of the Chris- 
tian family ; and here I may say that nearly all we have said 
of the Christian son — of his early training, his preparation 
for the sacraments, and his obedience to parents — will be 
equally applicable to the growing-up girl. She, equally 
with her little brother, must be taught to love truth and 
to practice it ; to honor virtue ; to reverence old age. 
She, as well as he, must have her little lips attuned to 
prayer, and her youthful heart warmed into an intense 
love of God. 

Nor must it be surmised that there is no passion in 
the female child, or that she requires less attention than 
her more demonstrative brother. On the contrary, ill 
feeling and the spirit of stubbornness are more deeply 



8 



THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. 



seated in the female child, and last longer, than in the boy. 
And so, in the best of little girls are evil tendencies — more 
in some, less in others ; strong in some, easily checked in 
others; but some in all. 

As in the case of the boy, it is important that the ex- 
ample of the parents be pure and good. When I see a 
mild, gentle, industrious girl here in Sunday school, I 
make up my mind that her parents are of the true Chris- 
tian stamp, and I do not wonder that the child is good. 
But if I find such a child, and learn that her parents were 
anything but exemplary, I simply say to myself: "This is 
miraculous. A good child in the midst of such bad ex- 
ample ! " And yet such a thing happens — an exception, 
however. 

The female child should be a little person of the very 
best manners. A brusque exterior and plain manners may 
be excused in a boy at the same time that they would be 
unpardonable in a girl. 

There is one thing, however, in which girls are so dis- 
tinctly different from boys that we can not pass it over, 
and that is the matter of dress. The majority of mothers 
overdress their children. They thus create in their child 
an inordinate love of display, a spirit of vanity, which 
may bring a young lady into many social excesses in 
after-life. Some schools — and the convent-school is not 
always an exception — seem to encourage this spirit in the 
child, and, in their exhibitions and commencements, permit 
their pupils to adorn and dress themselves indelicately. In 
many cases the parents of these children are wearing out 
their lives in order to procure the common necessaries of 
life. I have known instances in the past — and doubtless 
there are instances to-day — of mothers who toil for their 
daily sustenance, and at the same time maintain children 
dressed up like actresses. This is wrong. And the sooner 



THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. 



9 



every family is taught to keep within its means, to lessen 
its wants, to bring up their children in common sense and 
a spirit of economy, and to cease aping those who have 
more money — the sooner, I say, the better. 

So, too, with regard to the first communion day. I 
have seen little girls on that day wholly occupied in at- 
tending to their dress, apparently forgetful of their great 
duty. The first communion dress should be simple: a 
plain dress — white, if possible ; at all events, clean and 
becoming. 

With regard to those young ladies who come home 
from boarding-schools, we are forced to say — and here we 
must be a little severe, for we wish to be impressive — that, 
as a rule, they are inclined to be conceited, until they get 
to know the world a little. They have "finished their 
education," as they express it, and feel tempted to think 
themselves superior to those around them. Well, they may 
be better educated than many of their acquaintances, but 
this fact will not give them a license to be overbearing or 
unladylike. Such ladies should take care, for the plainest 
people are very sharp, and will often make bitter remarks 
— such as, " Indeed, education was thrown away on her ; 
she is a haughty, unmannerly, unladylike person." And 
they will very readily detect the really educated and lady- 
like, saying: "Ah, that is a lady! You feel at home with 
her. With all her learning and accomplishments, she can 
be pleasing and affable. She is not a bit changed, a bit 
spoiled, by her education." 

Too many of our so-called educated young ladies for- 
get, or do not know, that to make every one feel at home 
in one's company is the very essence of social perfection. 
A real, unfeigned love for our fellow-creatures, shown in 
our manner toward them, and in our respect for ourselves, 
is one of the first essentials of the gentleman or the lady. 

2 



lO 



THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. 



From this it follows that we should never hurt any one by 
our manner; and, hence, real politeness is defined as be- 
nevolence in small things. Good manners, then, are all- 
important to a young lady, and will even come to her aid 
in the absence of beauty or good looks. If pleasing man- 
ners have made the fortune of many men, they are the 
explanation of the wondrous social success of nearly all 
plain women. Hence Chesterfield has said, that for a 
woman the art of pleasing is the art of rising in society 
and the world. 

Some of our Christian daughters may be educated a 
little too highly for our average young men. Too many 
of them, we fear, look down on honest labor, on the young 
mechanic or tradesman, and cast their eyes on some bank- 
er's clerk or broker's assistant, who, with ten or twelve 
dollars a week, studies the manners of the millionaire, 
frequents the opera, affects a gold-headed cane, and may 
not be above forging his employer's name. Many a young 
lady has made trouble for herself through love of style 
and glitter and society." Far better would it be for her 
had she cast her eyes on the honest young tradesman who 
attends to his religious duties, is well thought of in the 
community, is temperate and steady — forgetting altogether 
that he neither dresses in the pink of fashion nor talks in 
the tone of the schools. 

And what of the novel-reading young lady ? Oh, if 
there is anything calculated to make a girl unreal, un- 
practical, dreamy, it is the habit of novel-reading. Nor 
is this all. Nine tenths of the novels that are commonly 
read palliate crime and social disorder, condone the mur- 
der committed through unholy love, and treat as heroes 
and heroines those who run off with other people's wives 
and husbands. Nor does the evil rest here. The reading 
of most of our novels may make their readers uncatholic 



THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. 



II 



and irreligious; at all events, it will give them a distaste 
for religion, for prayer, and for devotional exercises. And 
why not? The average novel is never free from open at- 
tacks against Catholicity or secret stabs at all religion. 

Nay, more: the novel-reading girl generally makes an 
unhappy marriage alliance — a foolish kind of match — 
which she soon learns to regret. She looks for a Protest- 
ant young man, as less restrained by rule, and more like 
her beau-ideal of the society man. He is a good young 
man, perhaps, but unfit to be the husband of just such a 
person. But she will marry him, though she may have 
her fears for the future. She tells the priest that he is a 
splendid youth, generous, with no prejudice against the 
faith, a pure young man, an angel. Well, they get mar- 
ried, and, six months after, the door-bell at the parochial 
house is rung, and a heavily veiled female modestly asks 
to see the priest. She has a sad story to tell. She has 
been abused, and called names in which her religion was 
not complimented. And oh, worst of all, this very day he 
has thrust her out of doors and thrown her down the 
stoop ! Yes, called papist, and thrown down the stoop 
by the angel of six months ago — the angel on whose arm 
she hung so proudly in the heyday of her girlish affection. 
And some of her neighbors, v/ho knew her history, would 
be kind enough to say, " Served her right ! " 

With regard to the working girls, I say, taking every- 
thing into consideration, they are very worthy persons 
indeed. Considering all they experience in streets and 
cars and ferryboats and factories ; considering the bad 
language they are forced to hear ; the tyranny they are 
subject to from cruel foremen and avaricious employers, 
the working girl is a very admirable person indeed. The 
moral taught by The Song of the Shirt can be just as 
well pointed to-day as in the days of the author of that 



12 



THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. 



exquisite ballad. Oh, that some Hood would give to the 
world of to-day some ballad equally scathing and more 
effective ! 

It remains for each of us to endeavor to make home 
happy, exercising mutual forbearance and Christian affec- 
tion. Thus shall we contribute in making the Christian 
family the earthly image of that celestial Home which 
awaits us beyond the grave. 



CORNELIUS HEENEY. 



Read before the United States Catholic Historical Society^ 
September 28, i8gi. 

In opening a paper which is mainly biographical in its 
character it will not, I presume, be out of place to call at- 
tention to the fact that the world is ever desirous of know- 
ing all it can concerning those who have deserved well of 
their kind. We listen anxiously to the history of those who 
by their virtues have done honor to their race, and we 
willingly pay tribute to the noble and the good. This feel- 
ing within us is the source of that delight which has always 
been associated with the perusal of biography, and with 
the endeavor to rescue from oblivion the name and deeds 
of good men. Need we say how earnestly this feeling is 
fostered by the young Catholic Historical Society of the 
United States ? — while I take this occasion to thank its 
venerable president for the honor of being here to-night 
to read you a brief paper on the life and deeds of Corne- 
lius Heeney, Irish-American citizen, legislator, and philan- 
thropist. 

Men of brave heart and steady resolve were the Irish 
Catholics who came to this land in the latter half of the 
last century. Brave and sturdy, too, we know, were their 
Protestant fellow-countrymen who emigrated about the 
same time, chiefly from the north of the Emerald Island, 
and who called themselves Scotch-Irish. These latter, 
however, came to colonies already intensely Protestant, 

(13) 



CORNELIUS HEENEY. 



laid their plans in congenial soil, came unto their own and 
were w^ell received. But the Irish Catholic immigrant had 
uphill work at that time. He fled from oppression at home, 
and was met with indifference here. He was not, however, 
as a rule, the mere hewer of wood and drawer of water that 
his average successor was in the next century, and even 
down to our own day. No; a very large representation 
of the more educated class came over, making their mark 
in the mercantile and literary world here, and above all 
were they prominent in the ranks of the crude army then 
struggling for the national independence of the colonies. 
This very war of independence did much to level social 
and religious barriers. And so religious prejudice was 
not at all so rife when, in 1784, Cornelius Heeney left his 
native Kings County, Ireland, and sailed for the city of 
Brotherly Love. He was then thirty years of age, had 
acquired a mercantile education in the business house of 
a relative in the city of Dublin, and gave evidence of de- 
cided business talent. In his youth he lost his mother; 
and his father, having married again, preceded him to this 
country. Of this marriage there were two daughters, one 
of whom for a short time lived with her half-brother, Mr. 
Heeney. They were not congenial, and soon agreed to 
separate. It was an open secret that she grew displeased 
at his large charities. Mr. Heeney, however, provided lib- 
erally for her; and to her credit be it stated here — for we 
shall not have occasion to recur to her again — that at her 
death she left all she had to the orphans. Connected with 
his arrival here is told an anecdote well known to those 
who remember Mr. Heeney, illustrative of his early pov- 
erty as well as of the kindness of a member of the Society 
of Friends. On entering the Delaware River the ship on 
which Heeney had sailed was struck by lightning and 
wrecked. Some oystermen, dredging near by, rescued the 



CORNELIUS HEENEY. 



15 



passengers, and for this service they demanded from each 
the sum of one dollar. A friendly Quaker, who some say 
was a fellow-passenger, others a mere looker-on, lent the 
dollar to the impecunious Irishman. Asking the name of 
his benefactor, that he might, when able, repay him, Heeney 
received the reply, " Whenever thou seest a fellow-creature 
in want of a dollar, as thou art now, give it to him, and 
thou shalt have repaid me." In after-years, when Heeney's 
property was valued by the hundred thousand, he would 
entertain his friends with the relation of this episode, ac- 
companied by an act of thanks to Providence and a kindly 
word for the Society of Friends. Looking back now, one 
would judge that Mr. Heeney had a peculiar liking for 
this proverbially honest sect ; for not only was his first 
employer in Philadelphia, w^here he passed his first three 
months, a Quaker, a Mr. Mead, but Mr. Backhus, who be- 
came his first New York employer, was a member of that 
same society. Backhus was an English furrier. 

About this time there arrived in New York a young 
German, who on the streets, through which he peddled 
doughnuts for a baker, was popularly known as Hans 
Yakob. He soon became fellow-porter and general sales- 
man with Heeney in the store of Mr. Backhus, and was 
known to posterity as John Jacob Astor. Backhus soon 
retired from business, went home to England, and Heeney 
and Astor became his joint successors. Their business 
prospered. Astor, by his marriage with Miss Todd, se- 
cured the large fortune of $300, and soon made a voyage 
to England with a large lot of beaver skins, on which 
he slept during the voyage, submitting to steerage ac- 
commodation through motives of economy. These were 
two remarkable men. Heeney was the scholar and the 
bookkeeper. Astor was the planner, and, so to speak, the 
plodder. Heeney was sociable almost to conviviality, 



i6 



CORNELIUS HEENEY. 



good-humored, and, though unmarried, delighted in the 
companionship of children. Astor was pensive, distant, 
and entirely devoted to money-making. But their histo- 
ries have much in common. Both came here to seek their 
fortunes, and were contemporaries in the search and the 
struggle. Both left home in poverty and reached here in 
disaster ; for, as Heeney was wrecked in the Delaware, 
without money enough to pay for his transfer to the shore, 
Astor landed at Hampton Roads, having been frozen up 
in the Chesapeake, with no property but half a dozen 
flutes, and even these he was to sell for the benefit of his 
brother. This, too, they had in common — a high regard 
for Mr. Backhus, a man w^hom Heeney always referred to 
with respect, and after whom Astor named his son, William 
Backhus Astor. Heeney and Astor soon dissolved part- 
nership. They lived in friendship, however, and, to com- 
plete the round of similarities, both died in the same year. 
Astor retained the Backhus store. Heeney purchased a 
three-story building, 82 Water Street. They became 
prominent among such merchants as Watts of Pearl 
Street, Gilchrist of Beaver Street, Livingston of White- 
hall Street, corner of Stone, Dominick Lynch of Broad- 
way, near Morris Street, Richard Varick, Mayor and Re- 
corder of New York city, Broadway, corner of Pine Street, 
W^illiam Bayard, 43 Wall Street, Morgan Lewis, Maiden 
Lane, and James Duane of Nassau Street. In the sub- 
urbs, around and above City Hall, lived at this time the 
Beeckmans, Rutgers, Roosevelts, Aaron Burr, Clintons, 
Gates, and Willetts. Among them were citizens Rufus 
King, Robert Lenox, Joshua Sands, Samuel Provost (the 
Episcopal bishop), Anthony Lispenard, Benjamin Kissam 
(physician), James W. De Peyster, and Peter Lorillard. 
Among the members of Assembly for the city of New 
York about that time were William A. Duer, Clarkson 



CORNELIUS HEENEY. 



17 



Crolius, William B. Rochester, and the subject of this 
sketch, Cornelius Heeney. Duer became President of 
Columbia College ; and one of the most charming cities 
in the State was named for William B. Rochester. Mr. 
Heeney was elected to the Assembly in 1816, and re- 
elected in 1817, 1818, 1819, 1820, and 1821. An episode in 
his life in the Assembly illustrates at once how keen was 
Mr. Heeney's sense of duty and how strong in his soul 
was his love of native land. The name of Rufus King was 
proposed for the Senate of the United States. Mr. Heeney, 
though visited personally by Martin Van Buren, always his 
friend, who represented to him the power that would accrue 
to the Democratic party through the election of Mr. Kmg, 
resolutely refused to vote for him. Mr. Van Buren per- 
sisted, but to no purpose. Mr. Heeney held firm, and 
declared that not for all the collective Senate and Assem- 
bly on bended knees would he consent to vote for King. 
And he gave as his reason Rufus King's conduct, when 
minister to England, in opposing the emigration to Ameri- 
ca of Thomas Addis Emmet, Dr. McNevin, William Samp- 
son, and other leaders in the Irish rebellion of 1798. 

Heeney continued unmarried, and lived over the store, 
82 Water Street, with a few bachelor friends. His busi- 
ness grew larger every year, and he frequently visited 
Canada for the purchase of furs. He grew so wealthy, 
that when the fire of 1835, which ruined so many others, 
broke out and attacked his premises, he suffered compar- 
atively little. Soon after, he retired from business and 
went to live on his Brooklyn estate. This property Mr. 
Heeney acquired in the course of his varied business 
transactions. It was situated chiefly between Congress 
and Amity Streets, fronting on the East River and run- 
ning up to Court Street, seventeen acres in all. It in- 
cluded a mansion and gardens, and the sum allowed for 



i8 



CORNELIUS HEENEY. 



the purchase was only $7,500. Think of the immense 
ground value of these seventeen acres to-day! 

As early as 1809 Mr. Heeney's name was prominent in 
great works of Catholic w^elfare and charity. Three years 
afterward, in 1812, he visited Emmettsburg, Md., and wit- 
nessed with admiration the labors of the Sisters of Charity 
there. From Mother Seton he secured a branch of the 
order for New York. To this branch he gave $18,000 to es- 
tablish the Prince Street Orphan Asylum. In 1816 and the 
following years he added to this gift by the donation of 
adjoining lots. Even on his own private lot he erected a 
female charity school for the children of the old cathedral ; 
and afterward, with the co-operation of Father Varela, of 
happy memory, he built what was then known as the half- 
orphan asylum, subsidizing this gift by a large gift of 
real estate in his will. In the many renovations of St. 
Peter's, Barclay Street, and also in the erection of St. 
Patrick's, Mr. Heeney was largely instrumental. He was 
at one time joint owner, with Andrew Morris, of the site 
on which St. Patrick's Cathedral, Fifth Avenue, now stands. 
In course of time it passed into the hands of the trustees 
of St. Peter's and of old St. Patrick's. Besides this, he 
was the main donor of the old cathedral cemetery, beauti- 
fying it and planting trees at considerable cost. Then he 
turned his heart to Brooklyn, giving grounds and money 
for the female asylum and for the Church of St. Paul, 
corner of Court and Congress Streets. He even opened 
some generous measures for the introduction into Brook- 
lyn of higher Catholic education under the Ladies of the 
Sacred Heart; but this project, for some reason, was 
abandoned. All this time Mr. Heeney manifested an 
absorbing love for children. After his purchase of the 
Brooklyn estate it was his custom to take the orphan 
little ones over from New York and march gayly at their 



CORNELIUS IIEENEY. 



19 



head into his orchard and gardens. This he did at various 
festive times during the year, but chiefly in the summer 
months, when the lawns were green and the fruit was ripe 
and wholesome. It was his delight to shake the trees for 
the little ones and then enjoy their scramble for the fruit. 
On these occasions, we are told, he was particularly happy. 
The children's joy was his delight. It is told of the great 
Edmund Burke that, on a visit to his native Ireland, he 
once paid for the admission of a crowd of children into a 
strolling showman's playhouse, at the price of a penny a 
head, and never in his life, he afterward declared, had he 
purchased so much pleasure at so small a cost. What 
Burke did once, Mr. Heeney was doing for thirty years, and 
the good work goes on to the present day. Not only this, 
but his very house was a resort for persons suddenly bereft 
of means, business men who failed conscientiously, children 
of worthy parents prematurely taken away. For such he 
always provided comfortably; many he educated, and 
placed in good positions. Those who remember him best 
have told us that, though a shrewd man in business, and 
knowing well the value of money, Mr. Heeney was simple 
and playful as a child. At Christmas and other festive 
seasons, when he was particularly kind to the poor and the 
little ones, he frequently laid traps and stratagems to cre- 
ate fun and frolic. He would not smile at the poor people 
in the moment of their little discomfiture, or even appear 
to have perceived it, but would hide himself behind a 
tree or a shed and indulge in immoderate laughter. It 
was this same spirit of joke and frolic, one would infer, 
that urged him to actually shovel in a load of coal for a 
pretentious individual, who, when the work was done and 
the mistake fully realized, was most profuse in his apolo- 
gies. 

That a man of Mr. Heeney's wealth should have 



20 



CORNELIUS HEENEY. 



many claimants and aspirants to kinship is not at all 
astonishing. It was chiefly after his death, however, that 
such persons made their appearance and advanced their 
claims as heirs to the estate. Once, during his life, two 
men bearing the name of Heeney came from Ireland in 
a vessel of which they said they were owners, and which 
they were allowed to moor gratis at Mr. Heeney's wharf. 
Mr. Heeney was kind and hospitable to them, but when 
he was told, one morning, that they claimed to be his 
nephews, he calmly walked down to the dock and cut the 
hawser, sending the vessel adrift away down to the vicinity 
of Buttermilk Channel. For this act the men sued Mr. 
Heeney in court. The venerable years and philanthropic 
character of Mr. Heeney attracted large crowds to the 
court room on that occasion. The old gentleman — he was 
nearing ninety at that time — was in his happiest mood. 
Bemg asked to inform the court as to his precise age, he 
replied in words which elicited peals of laughter: "Judge, 
don't press that question, if you please. I am still a 
bachelor, and there are ladies in the gallery." 

In May, 1845, he chartered at Albany, and later in the 
same year he established in Brooklyn, the great work of 
his life, the Brooklyn Benevolent Society, of which we shall 
speak after we have left Mr. Heeney in the grave. He 
died as he had lived. In life he had been a monthly com- 
municant; at his death he received the last sacraments. 
During his illness he was visited by Bishop Hughes, for 
years his friend and admirer ; by Father Schneller, his 
pastor; by Father Michael Curran, his spiritual director; 
and by his favorite physician. Dr. J. Sullivan Thorne. He 
died May 3, 1848, only two months after the death of 
John Jacob Astor, his friend of sixty years. Next day, in 
Brooklyn's daily paper, the Eagle, besides a complimentary 
editorial on Mr. Heeney, his death was announced. At 



CORNELIUS HEENEY. 



21 



ten o'clock, Saturday, May 6th, the funeral moved from 
his late residence, in Amity Street, to St. Paul's Church. 
The Rev. William Starrs, then of St. Mary's, New York, 
the Rev. George McClosky, then of the Cathedral, New 
York, and the Rev. David Bacon, then of the Assumption, 
Brooklyn, were present. The church was thronged by 
a sobbing multitude, chiefly the poor. The Sisters of 
Charity were largely represented. The pall-bearers were 
mainly the trustees of the Brooklyn Benevolent Society, 
Messrs. Cooper, Glover, and Gottsberger, of New York, 
and Messrs. Friel, Turner, Peck, Thorne, Halligan, and 
Copeland, of Brooklyn. Father Schneller reviewed Mr. 
Heeney's life in its three leading aspects — poverty in 
youth, industry in manhood, generosity in his years of 
affluence. They laid his body in St. Paul's churchyard, 
amid the wailings of a grateful people, and over the pre- 
cious mound they cut in marble the features of a benign, 
familiar face, Friend of the w4dow and the orphan." The 
whole epitaph is worth the reading: '^In memory of Cor- 
nelius Heeney, who departed this life on the 3d day of 
May, 1848, in the ninety-fourth year of his age. Born in 
Kings County, Ireland, he was a citizen of the United 
States from the adoption of the Federal Constitution. 
Throughout his life he was much respected for his many 
Christian virtues, and was distinguished as the friend of 
the widow and orphan by his numerous acts of private 
benevolence and liberal gifts for the erection and support 
of institutions for their benefit; and at his death by the 
munificent bequest of an estate for their relief and com- 
fort. Requiescat in pace. Erected by his executors, James 
Friel and Peter Turner, with the concurrence of the Brook- 
lyn Benevolent Society, of which he was the founder." 

From those who remember Mr. Heeney we have learned 
a little of his personal appearance. He was about five feet 



22 



CORNELIUS HEENEY. 



nine inches in height, cleanly shaven, and pleasing rather 
than handsome of face. His forehead was a receding one, 
and his head bald on top. His nose, decidedly aquiline, 
evinced resolution rather than kindliness, and called to 
one's mind the episode of stern refusal to vote for Rufus 
King. The tout etisemble of his make-up at once suggested 
the Quaker, whom he seemed to imitate and whose sect he 
admired. His hair, when long, was confined behind his 
neck by a slight ribbon, and fell over his coat collar, and 
to a stranger he would pass as an orthodox Quaker, even 
to the broad-brimmed hat and William Penn knee-breeches. 

The Right Rev. John Hughes presided at the first 
meeting of the Brooklyn Benevolent Society, August 6, 
1845. At that meeting the Mayor of Brooklyn spoke in 
terms of enthusiastic eulogy of the generous donor whose 
name shall be held in remembrance by a grateful people." 
Then Mr. Heeney rose, and stated that while he wished 
no restrictions in the dispensations of the society, when 
there was a manifest necessity in the object, it was mainly 
his desire that his Catholic countrymen and their families 
should be relieved from want, many of them on their ar- 
rival here being in absolute need of assistance. He hoped 
the committee would understand that it was this class he 
WMshed especially to be provided for. Bishop Hughes was 
elected president at this first meeting, and the deed giving 
over the estate to the society was presented to them Sep- 
tember 17, 1845. 

The March meeting of 1848 saw Mr. Heeney present 
for the last time. In the minutes of June 6th, following, 
we read the resolutions, grateful and sad, on his death. 
Year after year, since then, some such sad record creeps 
into the minutes of the meetings, until to-day not one of 
the original members is alive to speak of the Brooklyn 
Benevolent Society, or of its noble-hearted founder. On 



CORNELIUS HEENEY 



23 



April 6, 1861, the present venerable Bishop of Brooklyn, 
whom may God preserve, was unanimously chosen presi- 
dent and trustee. Let it be understood here that it is 
only the ground rent that belongs to the Brooklyn Benevo- 
lent Society. Leases are given every twenty-one years, 
and the property is revalued. Some parts may depreciate 
in value, others may increase. Three appraisers do the 
work, one chosen by the owner of the house, one by 
the society, and the third by the two already selected. 
In the minutes of September 6, 1876, I came across a cor- 
dial vote of thanks to Mr. Andrew Dougherty (an old 
Brooklynite, now resident of the yet unannexed city of New 
York), for his conscientious work as appraiser during the 
preceding six or seven years. On March 24, 1886, the re- 
ceipts and disbursements for the previous year read on 
the records as: Receipts, $24,590.81; disbursements, all 
of this sum excepting $502.97, balance on hand. And this 
is the financial history of the average year: some $23,000 
given to the poor, mainly through the St. Vincent de Paul 
Conferences. A fifth is given in coal, a tenth in shoes 
and stockings, the balance in cash to the orphans. 

No need here to more than refer to the long and 
troublesome suits brought by would-be heirs of this good 
man. Suffice it to tell that the late Charles O'Conor ever 
and eloquently safeguarded and defended the rights of 
the dear orphans whom Heeney loved. The society more 
than once sent delegates to Ireland, and they failed to 
find a legitimate claimant. Heeney was the only child of 
his parents; he himself never married, and he was heard 
to declare, after the death of his half-sister, that he had 
no living relatives. How wise this man was in the con- 
stitution of his society posterity has already acknowledged. 
By adding ex-officio members to the regular corps he pre- 
vented the possibility of any fatal collusions. These mem- 



24 



CORNELIUS HEENEY. 



bers were once appealed to in such a danger, our beloved 
Archbishop gracing the occasion with his presence and 
aiding in the consummation that was most devoutly 
hoped for. 

Mr. Heeney is gone; but is it not almost literally true 
that he still liveth ? May his memory stimulate others to 
generous deeds, assuring them, in words more forcible 
than any poetry, that 

Kind hearts are more than coronets, 
And simple faith than Norman blood" ; 

suggestive, too, of the reward promised to him who gives, 
in kindly spirit of Christian charity, even a cup of cold 
water. 



THE MUSIC OF IRELAND. 



Delivered before the Celtic Society of New York, 

Of music in general it is only necessary to premise 
what all writers on the subject seem so happy in admit- 
ting — that God himself is its author. It was implanted in 
man's nature by the great Creator himself. It is as old as 
the human race. 

All that sacred Scripture has left us of the first two 
thousand years of this world's history is conveyed in less 
than three hundred sentences. Yet, brief as this epitome 
is, it contains a distinct notice of music; for music is 
spoken of as practiced one thousand years before the 
Deluge — that is, two thousand years before any of the 
other arts or sciences were, even rudely, developed. It is 
recorded of Jubal — the seventh descendant, yet the con- 
temporary of Adam — that he was the father of them 
that play on the harp and the organ."* (The Hebrew 
words Kiiinor and Hugab^ which are translated harp and 
organ^ are only generic names for musical instruments — 
stringed, or pulsatile, or wind instruments.) Now, vocal 
music is admittedly older than instrumental music; but 
instrumental music was in use during a great portion of 
Adam's life, and therefore it is plain that vocal music is 
as old as our first father himself. 

Music, one would judge, is as old as language. Lan- 
guage is merely conventional. It has no meaning except 



3 



* Genesis, iv, 21. 
(25) 



26 



THE MUSIC OF IRELAND. 



for those who are party to the compact as to the signifi- 
cance of its sounds; whereas music is felt and understood 
by the whole human race. It is the language of Nature. 
It is felt by the infant and the savage. It speaks in the 
breeze, in the stream, in the storm. It whispers through 
the leaflets, sings through the trees, mourns through the 
ivied ruin. It thrills the human heart, producing affec- 
tions of joy or of sorrow. Man may not appreciate other 
arts, while music has an abiding fascination for him. The 
uncultivated rustic, who would see no beauty in the rarest 
Raphaels, and who would turn away with indifference 
from the Apollo Belvedere, is instantly alive to the tones 
of music, and loves them and is affected by them. The 
influence of music begins with the cradle and ends only 
with the grave, and so much do we prize it that we make 
it part of the enjoyment of heaven. 

With regard to the music of Ireland, I would begin by 
stating that, when Ireland's great apostle first entered 
the halls of Tara, he saw around him not kings only and 
princes, but bards, harpers, and minstrels. Venerable 
men they were, with long beards, and wearing flowing 
robes. They sat in the councils of the nation, and, when 
debate was over, their duty was to sound forth the na- 
tional melodies and fill the halls with the strains of na- 
tional song. The music of the Hibernian branch of the 
Celtic race is coeval with their history, and from the ear- 
liest times Ireland has been called The Land of Song." 
Of the antiquity of the harp there is no doubt. It was 
the favorite instrument of David, the royal prophet; and 
that the Irish harp was a facsimile of the Egyptian one 
goes very far to prove the antiquity of Irish music. 
Indeed, centuries before the Christian era "the people 
deemed each other's voices sweeter than the warblings of 
a melodious harp; such peace and concord reigned among 



THE MUSIC OF IRELAND. 



27 



them that nothing could delight them more than the 
sound of their own voices."* Tara," continues the 
famous book from which we quote, " was so called for 
the celebrity of its melodies." Alas ! no music is there 
to-day, for 

" The harp that once through Tara's halls the soul of music shed, 
Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls as if that soul were fled." 

That music was highly esteemed in *'the Island of 
Destiny," we conclude from the honors showered upon its 
votaries. They were exempted from paying public taxes. 
The tax levied for the killing of a bard was next to that 
levied for the killing of a king. They were educated in 
seminaries, where all class business was put to music 
and chanted in the halls. A title — "The," similar to 
the knighthood of our day — w^as conferred upon them, 
just as the same title was conferred in later times, be- 
cause of their nobility and valor, on The O'Brien of Des- 
mond, The O'Conor Don, and The O'Donoughue of the 
Glens. 

Such was Irish music before Patrick came, and then 
what an inspiration it received ! If, as we are told, 
Patrick had but to convert the Druid-stones into altars, 
and the wells, sacred in paganism, into baptismal fonts, 
so he had but to change the harper into a chorister, and 
to wed the nation's old melodies to the words of the na- 
tion's new liturgy. Thus Duvach, a converted bard, is 
recorded as displaying a higher genius in glorifying the 
true God than that which pagan muses imparted to his 
strains in adulation of Baal : " Carmina quce quondam pere- 
git i?i laudem falsorum deorum^ jam in usum meliorem mu- 
tans et linguam^ poemata clariora co7nposuit in laudem Om- 



* Book of Baliymote. 



28 



THE MUSIC OF IRELAND. 



nipoteritis'' (Jocelin, Vita Patricii) ; and Fiach, a bishop, 
was the composer of some charming chants which still 
survive, and which he sang in honor of his new master, 
St. Patrick. 

Ambrosian chant was introduced into Ireland very 
soon after its institution at Milan; and two canons of a 
synod held by Patrick himself relate specially to Church 
music, and show that chanters were, even at that early 
period, reckoned among the inferior clergy. St. Bernard, 
in his admirable Life of St. Malachy, relates that that 
Irish bishop had diligently learned ecclesiastical chant 
when a mere boy, and afterward established its practice 
in his primatial church at Armagh. And when the Grego- 
rian chant came into use it was cultivated by the Irish 
priesthood, and taught by them not only at home but in 
every country on the Continent. To the Acta Sanctorum 
of the Bollandists we owe the information that two Irish- 
men were the first to teach psalmody to the nuns of St. 
Gertrude's convent, a. d. 650. An Irishman — Helias, or 
Hely — was the first to teach the Roman chant in the old 
city of Cologne. England and Scotland received their 
first harpers from Ireland, as their own musicians admit; 
and in an old preface to Dante's Inferno the poet states 
that the only harp he had ever seen came from Ireland: 
^'U?iicam quam vidi cytharam^ ex Hibernia venit'' Every 
bishop in the country, according to Cambrensis — a hostile 
witness — was a harper, and took his harp with him wher- 
ever he went, to soothe him m his hours of care and to 
sweeten his hours of rest. Episcopi^ abbates^ et sancti in 
Hibernia viriy cytha?'as circiimferre et in eis modiilando pie de- 
lectari consueverinf (Cambr., Topog. Hib.). This accounts 
for the fact that so many Irish ecclesiastics are repre- 
sented in old entablatures with a harp resting on their 
knees. 



THE MUSIC OF IRELAND. 



29 



The same may be stated with regard to the profane 
music of the land. National music was highly cultivated. 
The bard and the harper were met on every road. An- 
cient authorities tell us that they numbered at one time 
twelve hundred, at another that they amounted to nearly 
a third of the whole population. Hereditary estates were 
settled on the most skilled in the art ; and the extensive 
barony of Carbery, in the county of Cork, was the pension 
settled by a Munster king on the bard of Cairbre. And 
who will say that the Irish are not a musical race in face 
of the fact that they alone of all peoples have interwoven 
the emblem of their nation's music with the green and 
gold of their nation's flag? 

Thus was Ireland not only the sanctuary of religion 
but the home of minstrelsy and song. Inside, over the 
door of each dwelling, hung the harp, inviting the bard's 
cunning touch. How beautifully Moore sings: 

" When the light of my song is o'er, 

Then take my harp to your ancient hall ; 
Hang it up at that friendly door, 
Where weary travelers love to call." 

But it may, not unnaturally, be asked. Had the Irish 
people a regular system of musical notation ? They had, 
indeed ; and though, from the time of St. Malachy, the 
musical schools occasionally used the common system of 
notation by staves and points, yet they seem to have pre- 
ferred their own old system. This latter consisted of a 
peculiar description of musical characters, something 
similar to the musical points and accents of the ancient 
Greeks. These directed both stringed instruments and 
the human voice, and gave birth to a large repertory of 
national song and harmony, which has come down almost 
unhurt to our own times. The superiority of Irish music 



30 



THE MUSIC OF IRELAND. 



about the time of the Norman invasion is reluctantly con- 
fessed by the most unfriendly contemporaries. After a 
scientific analysis of Irish popular airs one critic wrote: 
*^We have in the dominion of Great Britain no original 
music except the Irish." Gerald Cambrensis, the reviler 
of everything Hibernian, wrote : This people, however, 
deserves to be praised for their successful cultivation of 
instrumental music, in which their skill is, beyond com- 
parison, superior to that of every nation we have seen. 
For their modulation is not drawling and morose {tarda et 
morosa), like our instrumental music in Britain ; but the 
strains, while they are lively and rapid, are sweet and de- 
lightful. It is astonishing how the proportionate time of 
the music is preserved, notwithstanding such impetuous 
rapidity of the fingers; and how, without violating a sin- 
gle rule of the art, in running through trills and slurs, and 
variously intertwined organizing^ with so sweet a rapidity, 
so unequal an equality [tarn dispari paritatc) of time, so ap- 
parently dissonant a concord [discordi concordia) of sounds, 
the melody is harmonized and perfected." Stanihurst 
confirms this testimony; while Glynn's Manuscript Annals 
speak of one O'Carroll as a famous tympanist and harper 
— a phoenix in his art." In the same vein of praise write 
such pens as Spenser, Selken, and Good. An acknowl- 
edged authority on this matter asserts that it was from 
Ireland that the harp was introduced into Wales, and that 
Welsh musicians were instructed in Ireland. The Vener- 
able Bede relates that St. Aidan, St. Colman, St. Finan — 
all natives of Ireland and bishops in England — with a 
multitude of other Irishmen, opened colleges for higher 
studies, among which 7ni(sic was numbered. Add to this 
that Scotch annalists have told us that Highland poetry 
and music received their chief development in Irish 
schools. 



THE MUSIC OF IRELAND. 



31 



And what of the organ in Irish musical history ? 
Well, although "the king of instruments" was not 
brought to anything like perfection before the tenth cen- 
tury, and was not generally used before the twelfth, there 
are records showing how very soon afterward the organ 
became known in Ireland. About the end of the four- 
teenth century mention is made of this instrument as of 
something well known and familiar in the country; and 
an Archbishop of Dublin, by his will dated December 10, 
147 1, bequeathed his pair of organs to a city church to be 
used in the celebration of the divine offices. On a certain 
joyful occasion, a. d. 1488, *Hhe Archbishop of Dublin be- 
gan the Te Deum, and the choir with the organs sang it up 
solemnly.". In Moore's History of Ireland it is recorded 
that a pair of organs were carried off from the Abbey of 
Killeigh, 153Q. The Franciscan fathers in the convent of 
Multifernam enjoyed the possession of the oldest organ 
in Ireland; although the Book of Limerick declares that 
that city had two organs which had grown old before the 
wars of Elizabeth. 

With the . English invasion came the persecution of 
Irish music and musicians. Wishing to subjugate the 
country, the usurpers first sought to destroy its music. 
They knew full well what a power for strengthening na- 
tional feeling lay in national minstrelsy and song. They 
recognized the force of the saying, yet unformulated, 
" Give me the making of a people's ballads, and I care 
not who make their laws." The Normans — Catholics, of 
course, and some of them intensely Irish — were not very 
hostile in this regard. It was only with the Protestant 
Reformation that the effort was made to totally extin- 
guish Irish music and banish Irish harpers. One favorite 
of the harp-hating queen accepted a commission not only 
to destroy Irish harps but to hang the harpers. Severe 



32 



THE MUSIC OF IRELAND. 



legislation was framed at once, and the harp and the min- 
strel were sorely tried mdeed. In the contest 

" The minstrel fell ; but the foeman's chain 
Could not bring his proud soul under." 

Nevertheless, the harpers continued, and transmitted 
the craft to their sons, and went through the land, mak- 
ing every house their home, loved and honored by the 
people. And happy was it for the house where the piper 
or harper came to spend the night. The reader is fa- 
miliar with the touching story, told in song, of the old 
blind piper who, after twenty years, called at a house 
where only one inmate was left of all the dear old 
family. 

Yes, they lived and kept alive among the poor people 
the traditions of the land, the glories and the sorrows of 
centuries. In Carolan, the last of the great harpers, the 
glories of Irish minstrelsy found a noble exponent. Nor 
was the art quite lost at the end of the last century. At 
a musical contest in 17S1, one Charles Fanning took first 
prize for his charming performance of The Coolin, while 
a lady took third prize for her beautiful rendition of an- 
other famous air. James Dungan, a native of Granard, 
residing at Copenhagen, paid the expenses of several of 
these contests, which gave such an impetus to Irish music 
in the last century. Three others — Niel of Dublin, Burk 
Thumoth, and the son of the bard Tulloch O'Carolan — did 
much for the cause by collecting and publishing Irish 
melodies about the middle of the last century. But to 
Edward Bunting the country is indebted for the most 
complete collection of all. He went through the land, 
gathering old airs from the peasantry, and gave the result 
to the world of music in a volume (Dublin, 1840) which is 
near perfection. In later times Mr. Hardiman, Mr. Walker, 



THE MUSIC OF IRELAND. 



33 



The Citizen, and the Celtic and Ossianic societies have 
rescued from ruin some of the most exquisite ballads and 
Jacobite romances. To these may be added the names of 
Sir John Stephenson, McDonnell, Lee, Phelps, De Lacy, 
Carter, and, last and greatest of all, Kelly — Michael Kelly 
— who played and sang in nearly every court of Europe 
as well as in St. Peter's, Rome. 

A passing mention will suffice here of such names as 
John Mooreland, Thomas Carter, Rorke, Balfe, Cooke, 
Ashe, Madden, directors of music in the first theaters and 
best social coteries of Europe. Wallace is a man of our 
own day ; Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore has linked his for- 
tunes with "the sea-divided Gael of this great land; and 
within this year a Celtic tenor of great fame is heard in 
our operas, as if to remind his compatriots of the musical 
glories of other days. 

Carolan had scarcely died when Heaven sent to Ire- 
land a minstrel who revived all the grandeur of her an- 
cient national music. In the immortal Thomas Moore we 
have at once a poet and a musician. Taking hold of the 
grand old melodies of his native land, he wedded them to 
the most beautiful words, wove them into exquisite poetry ; 
and the grand old airs, which had so long kept warm the 
national life-blood of the people, assumed form, popularity, 
and vigor. Ah ! well might he have addressed the national 
instrument : 

*' Dear harp of my country, in darkness I found thee, 
The cold chain of silence had hung o'er thee long ; 
When, proudly, my own island harp, I unbound thee, 
And gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song." 

These Melodies are sung wherever music has a charm 
for mortals. Yea, many of them have been stolen and 
wedded to the songs of other lands; and even Haydn and 



34 



THE MUSIC OF IRELAND. 



Rossini have not blushed to accept a share of the spoils. 
That the thefts were committed at a time when Irish 
music, owing to English cruelty, was neglected, carries 
only a little palliation with it. And Flotow, too — ah ! 
what would be his Marta without that exquisite aria, 'Tis 
the Last Rose of Summer ? 

That Ireland is still a 'Mand of song" we would con- 
clude from the assuring fact that some of the greatest 
musical geniuses of the last century lived, and composed, 
and died in the Irish metropolis. Let a few be named. 
Dubourg, the world-famed violin-leader, began his resi- 
dence in Dublin in 1728; Castrucci died there in 1752; 
Geminiani, in 1762; Giordani, some time later. There 
Handel wrote his Messiah and other immortal composi- 
tions; and since his day the greatest artists have con- 
sidered Dublin audiences as second, in critical acumen, to 
none in the world. 

And here, in this Western land, we must not permit our- 
selves to suppose that ''the sea-divided Gael" has lost 
his instinctive love for sweet music. No ; considering his 
opportunities, he is very fairly represented in the musical 
life of our great commonwealths. His voice participates 
very largely in the service of our Church choirs. But why 
do not our Celtic people here join their voices in congrega- 
tional singifig as successfully as do our neighbors of Teu- 
ton descent ? Has the day of congregational song all but 
passed away ? Has the so-called Renaissance accom- 
plished its dire mission in this regard? Let us hope not. 
The divine offices of the Catholic Church are still as emi- 
nently fitted for harmonious expression as they wxre in 
the best days of monastic song, when Jerome called the 
Psalms the 'Move-songs of the people," when Ambrose 
and Augustine publicly recommended congregational 
chant, and when the divine praises arose in song on every 



THE MUSIC OF IRELAND. 



35 



hilltop in Europe from Monte Casino to Banchor, whose 
very name implies choral grandeur. 

It is through our children, in class-room or Sunday 
school, that success in this matter can be best attained. 
The old Gregorian airs to which the O Salutaris^ the Tan- 
tum Ergo^ and the Laudate are set are easily picked up 
by youthful ears. Then, wuth the children scattered 
through the congregation — who might be furnished with 
slips of paper containing the words — Benediction of the 
Blessed Sacrament could be sung, and a happy beginning 
effected. 

Let us hope, for the sake of everything that humanity 
holds dear, that the day will yet come when the poor little 
Island of Destiny " shall be again, as of old, the bright 
and happy land of song. 



THE BIBLE. 



I. 

Delivered in the CJiureh of the Trans figtiration, 

I TROPOSE speaking to you this evening, my friends, 
on the Bible; or, rather, I would explain to you the posi- 
tion of the Catholic Church with regard to that sacred 
volume. And, first of all, I must disclaim all intention of 
being, or of seeming to be, controversial. I shall simply 
lay before you some plain facts, and from these you can 
draw your own conclusions. 

The Bible is a book which contains truths revealed by 
God. It is divided into two parts, the Old Testament 
and the New. The former treats of the laws, religion, 
and morals of the pre-Christian period of this world's his- 
tory. The latter regards the teachings of Christ, and the 
code of morals to be observed under his dispensation. 
We shall confine ourselves chiefly to the New Testament 
and its relations to the Catholic Church. We shall there- 
fore have to keep before our minds two great things — 
viz., the Church and the Bible : the living voice of Christ 
and the Written Word of the sacred page. 

The Lord Christ established a Church on earth. He 
established it by his living voice, his personal teaching. 
He preached and taught by word of mouth. He told his 
poor disciples to go and do likewise — to preach to all na- 
tions. When he ascended into heaven the disciples went 
forth to do as he bade them; and multitudes of people in 
distant lands were converted to Christianity before one 

(36) 



THE BIBLE. 



37 



word was written of the book which we call the Bible, the 
New Testament. 

Our divine Lord is not recorded to have written a line 
of Scripture. Nor did he ever command his apostles to 
write. When he sent them on their apostolic mission he 
said to them : Go, teach all nations. Preach the gospel 
to every creature. He that heareth you, heareth me." He 
did not say, " Go, write my history, my teachings, and the 
book will be the only rule of faith for all mankind.'* No. 
Of the twelve apostles only five, and of the seventy-two 
disciples and all the early followers of our Lord only 
three, have left us any of their sacred writings. Only two 
of the twelve apostles thought it advisable to write a gos- 
pel — Mark and Luke not being apostles, not even counted 
among the disciples of our Saviour. Matthew and Mark 
were five years preaching before they wrote a line of their 
gospels. Luke wrote his gospel twenty-four years after 
our Lord's ascension ; John, sixty years after the ascen- 
sion. The Epistles were not written until many years after 
the ascension; some of them thirty years after that event. 
The entire New Testament did not exist until one hundred 
years after the ascension, and then its parts were scat- 
tered here and there, and were not collectively known to 
any of the churches. How could it be otherwise, when we 
know that the gospels and epistles were addressed not 
to the entire Christian people, but to particular persons 
or particular churches ? They were written on the occa- 
sion of some emergency, when some abuse was to be cor- 
rected in some particular church, or when special rules of 
conduct were to be laid down, just as bishops write pas- 
torals to-day. We have no record anywhere that the dis- 
ciples were commanded by God to write these epistles. 
Jesus certainly did not so command them; and hence we 
read only the words, But they, going iQi\Jti^ preached every- 



38 



THE BIBLE. 



where, the Lord co-operating with them." From all this 
it must not be supposed that the Catholic Church wishes 
to take away from the Bible its importance and its merits. 
God forbid ! We shall soon show you how the Church 
loved and revered the Bible, preserved it, and copied and 
adorned it in the days of storm and blood and sacrilege; 
and that, without the fostering care of that same Church, 
it is doubtful whether the sacred volume would be in 
existence to-day. 

If, then, the Bible is the rule of faith, and the only rule 
of faith, as the followers of the Reformation doctrine 
would have us believe; if from the Bible, and from the 
Bible only, we take that faith without which we can not 
be saved — what, I ask, became of those thousands of 
early Christians who had no Bible to guide them ? It 
is a historical fact, beyond the shadow of doubt or con- 
troversy, that a large portion of human society had be- 
come Christian before the book was heard of. Are we to 
suppose that, as they lived without the Bible, without the 
indispensable book, they were all deprived of eternal 
bliss beyond the grave? Forbid it. Almighty God! The 
darkest tenets of Calvin are bright compared to such a 
doctrine. Tertullian, who lived in the second century, 
tells us that in his time the cities, castles, towns, and as- 
semblies — yea, the very camps, the palaces, and the sen- 
ate — were filled with Christians. And yet in his time the 
Scriptures were only beginning to be gathered together. 
Justin Martyr, who lived at the same time, writes, "There 
is not one race of men, barbarian or Greek — nay, of those 
who live in wagons, or who are nomads, or shepherds in 
tents — among whom prayers and eucharists are not offered 
to the Father and Maker of the universe, through the 
name of the crucified Jesus." And this though the whole 
New Testament had not yet been gathered together. Thus, 



THE BIBLE. 



39 



my dear friends, I candidly tell you — and I have the un- 
controverted history of the early ages on my side — that 
not only did the Church exist before the Bible, but that 
the Church had grown to goodly proportions, had her vir- 
gins, her confessors, and her glorious army of martyrs 
before the great book had been put between its covers. 

Now, some one may not yet see — may yet ask — What 
has all this to do with the teaching of the Roman Catholic 
Church regarding the Scriptures ? I reply, It has every- 
thing to do with it. It indicates the relation between the 
Church and the book. That living voice, which founded 
a Church before the book had been put together, not only 
taught with the same authority after the book had been 
put together as it had taught before^ but became its inter- 
preter and its guarantee. It was that very Church that 
told the world what was true Scripture and what was not, 
what was inspired and what was not. The existence of 
the Church, therefore, was altogether independent of the 
book ; and if the sacred Scriptures were lost to-morrow, 
the Church would be no worse off than were those Chris- 
tians who lived and died before the Scriptures were written 
at all. 

What assurance have we that the book we possess is 
the mspj^ed^Nord of God ? May it not contain more than 
the word of God ? or does it contain all the word of God ? 
We are forced in honesty to go back to the time when 
these Scriptures were pronounced authentic and inspired. 
We must go av/ay back to the same authority that Luther 
had to fall back on for the inspiration and authenticity 
of that same volume. We must say the Catholic Church 
in the fourth century taught us, when in the third Council 
of Carthage it solemnly declared what books were canon- 
ical and what apocryphal. Thus it is the Catholic Church, 
and it alone, can stand up and tell to all the sects on earth 



40 



THE BIBLE. 



what is Scripture and what is not. But Luther, poor, 
proud, weak son of humanity, threw overboard a part of 
this sacred volume — the Epistle of St. James, which he 
called *'a letter of straw." He rejected this epistle be- 
cause it taught that good works as well as faith were 
necessary for salvation. He thought, or tried to think, 
or pretended to think, that, no matter what one's deeds 
were, good or bad, faith of itself could secure salvation. 
Therefore it was that with an easier conscience he broke 
his vows of chastity and committed the double sacrilege 
of taking a nun for his wife. Exemplary apostle of 
Reformation ! 

If the Catholic Church in the fourth century declared, 
as the Protestant Church of the last three centuries has 
declared, that the Bible, and the Bible only, was the true 
depository of faith, and that nobody could be saved with- 
out it, the entire Christian world would have laughed out- 
right. For the Bible was unknown to the great mass of 
the people. Not one in a thousand could read. The art 
of printing was not dreamed of. Men, Christian men, 
who feared God and kept his law, and partook of the 
eucharistic Supper, never saw and perhaps never heard 
of such a thing as a Bible. They lived and died and 
went to heaven innocent of the written law, even as 
many an old, illiterate, but pious and dutiful man or 
woman of our own day. Are our own Celtic grand- 
fathers and grandmothers all lost to God eternally be- 
cause, forsooth, they closed their eyes forever without 
having seen a Bible ? 

Here, then, we can put our finger on the very spot 
where the Catholic Church and the various forms of 
Protestantism split and part company. While the latter 
read the book to gather religion from it, we read it to 
illustrate, to strengthen, and to make deeper the religion 



THE BIBLE. 



41 



which we already hold from the teaching Church of God. 
We employ it to confirm and witness to that distinct faith 
which has been handed down by the living voice which 
spoke and taught with the selfsame authority before the 
book existed, as it has done since the book has become 
the property of all Christians. 

As the second, third, and fourth centuries were rolling 
by, the Church was securing all her talent to collate and 
translate the Scriptures — to study the Hebrew, Greek, and 
Syro-Chaldaic versions — and to present the whole New 
Testament in the one great Latin tongue to the entire 
Christian world. And this she did in the face of fierce 
persecution, at a time when Eastern Mohammedanism and 
ruthless vandalism had sworn to destroy the sacred book 
and the religion which fostered it. The Church all the 
while guarded the sacred volume as the apple of her eye ; 
watched, protected, and cherished it ; saved it from the 
rage of an Attila, from the fury of an Alaric — " bearing it, 
like a stout swimmer, aloft in her hand over the troublous 
waters of persecution, until she reached in safety the 
shores of civilization, where in due time she handed it 
over to the disciples of Guttenberg the printer, to be 
multiplied and diffused beyond the possibility of extinc- 
tion." 

Oh, what shall we say of the monks who spent their 
lives in copying and adorning the Scriptures ? Indeed, 
without this resource it is hard to see how the sacred vol- 
ume could have been spared to us. For learning, extin- 
guished all over the world, lived only within the sacred 
precincts of the convent — in the ark of the monastic insti- 
tution. Some monks spent their whole lives in the tran- 
scription of the Bible. And, not content with a bare 
transcript, they loved to embellish the sacred page with 
cunning devices, with illumination and miniature which at 



42 



THE BIBLE. 



the present day excite the wonder and challenge the rival- 
ry of artists. So transcendent was their work, that Ger- 
bert says, It seemed to be the product not of hu7?ian 
but of angelic hands." 

And so affairs progressed with the Bible until the 
glorious art of printing was invented. Here I am re- 
minded of an incident which occurred to myself only a 
short time ago; and it was this very incident, by the 
way, which suggested my selecting thi^ subject for to- 
night: A gentleman, apparently intelligent, accosted me 
on the street one evening as we were walking in the same 
direction from the ferry. In the course of a conversation 
on the Bible, he said he was startled to hear from me 
that Luther's version was not the first ever printed, as he 
thought the Catholic Church was afraid to diffuse the 
Bible after the invention of printing. He added that such 
was the accepted belief of his co-religionists. I told him 
that no fewer than fifty-six distinct editions of the Scrip- 
tures had appeared on the continent of Europe before 
Luther's. Of these editions, twenty-one were published 
in German; one in Spanish; four in French; twenty-one 
in Italian; five in Flemish; and four in Bohemian. Print- 
ing was no sooner invented than Catholic Bibles rolled 
out from the various presses with a rapidity that is truly 
amazing. 

The Catholic Church afraid of the Bible! Why, what 
was to hinder the Church from crushing the Bible out of 
existence in the early ages ? On the contrary, as early as 
the fourth century Pope Damasus commanded a new and 
complete translation of the Scriptures to be made into the 
Latin language ; not into the language of a circumscribed 
region, but into the language which was then the living 
tongue of the civilized world. St. Jerome, the most learned 
Hebrew scholar of his age, was set to the work of prepar- 



THE BIBLE. 



43 



ing the great Vulgate — i. e., the popular edition of the Bible, 
the edition best known to the ages that followed. And 
as new languages sprang up with the formation of new 
peoples new translations were made into them. The Ven- 
erable Bede, who lived in the eighth century, translated the 
Bible into Saxon, which was then the language of Eng- 
land. There was an English version of the Scriptures by- 
good and godly people with devotion and soberness well 
and reverently red." Open any Catholic Bible, and you 
will find on one of the first pages a letter from some Pope 
recommending the pious reading of the volume. Open 
the great Haydock Bible, printed in this country, and you 
will find a letter from every bishop in the United States 
indorsing it, and expressing a hope that it will be diffused 
among their flocks. It is only the other day that an emi- 
nent Protestant layman expressed surprise on- seeing, in 
the Catholic publication shops of Barclay Street, whole 
shelves upon shelves laden with Bibles in every size and 
print and style of binding. Does the Church fear the dif- 
fusion of the Bible ? 

Some there are, nevertheless, who object, and say the 
Church withholds the Bible from the people. Now, there 
is in this assertion an infinitesimal quantity of truth w^ith 
a very large quantity of error. The objection itself, how- 
ever, we shall answer in a future discourse, simply adding 
to-night, in the words of St. Peter (II Epistle, iii, i6), that 
there are in the Scriptures ''certain things hard to be un- 
derstood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest to their 
own destruction." The Jewish people were not allowed 
to read the Scriptures until after their thirtieth year. The 
Protestant Bishop Tillotson forbade his children the pro- 
miscuous reading of the Bible. 

Of other particulars in this matter — too numerous and 
too important to be treated of in a hurried manner — we 



44 



THE BIBLE. 



shall speak in a future address. For to-night let us be 
satisfied with a few facts: (i) That the old, thoughtful 
Catholic Church of Christ is the interpreter of the Word 
of God; (2) that she loves that Word, and has preserved 
it from ruin and decay ; but that (3) outside that Word she 
has a living tradition to guide the children of God, for 
many things also Jesus did and said ''that are not written 
in this book." 

In conclusion, we say we love the Bible because it is 
God's book. It tells us of the great men of old. Then 
let us read with love the sacred Word of God. It is the 
choicest food of the soul, the bread of life, the tree of 
true knowledge, of which all who taste shall be wise unto 
salvation. 



THE BIBLE. 



II. 

Delivered in the Church of the Trans figtirati on » 

When I last had the pleasure of addressing you, my 
dear friends, I endeavored to show that the Church of 
God was established, had grown to fair proportions, and 
was actually in existence for a whole century before the 
writings of the New Testament were completed. We saw 
that the Church existed two or three centuries before 
these writings were gathered together into one book; 
and that for a long time afterward, as very few copies 
existed, and very few people could read, the vast majority 
of Christians lived and died, century after century, with- 
out any actual knowledge of the sacred page. We saw 
how great was the care exhibited by the Church in the 
preservation, copying, and adorning of the Bible ; and 
how more than likely it seemed that, but for the fostering 
care of the Church in times of war and persecution, the 
book might have been lost to the world. With regard to 
the accusation made against the Church of withholding 
the Bible from the people, I think that the explanation 
given, though brief, was sufficiently conclusive. 

Now, let us place ourselves face to face with the real 
question of this evening — viz.. Is the Bible, and the Bible 
only, the rule of faith established by Christ for the salva- 
tion of mankind ? Protestants say Yes ; the Catholic an- 
swers No. 

Follow me closely, I pray you, this evening, and let us 

(45) 



46 



THE BIBLE. 



see as clearly as we can what was the intention of Jesus 
Christ in this matter. It is important for all of us, for it 
is the test of the great question which lies behind it — viz., 
Which is the true Church of Christ ? Let us honestly, and 
with an eye to the eternal salvation of our souls, examine 
this question, see what Christ did and said in relation to 
it, and what was the practice of those inspired apostles 
who, trained by Jesus himself, knew his intentions and 
desired to do his will. 

1. I begin by asking — and it is a natural question — If 
our Lord Jesus Christ intended to convert and save man- 
kind through writing, and through writing only, is it not 
probable that He himself would have written something? 
But the fact is that He never wrote a line in His whole life.* 

2. When He was commissioning his apostles to go on 
their world-wide missions, did He command them to write 
and chronicle all He had taught them? No; He never 
spoke a word to them about writin^:^. He said, ^' Go 
preach," *'Go teach all nations." If He intended that the 
Scriptures should be the rule of faith, He would, doubt- 
less, tell them to be sure and 7i'rite. 

3. If the apostles were under the impression that the 
Scriptures were to be the rule of faith, they would, each 
and all, make it their most sacred duty to lurite. Yet only 
five of the twelve wrote anything at all ; and three of the 
five have left us only a few brief epistles, written only on 
emergency and for special reasons. Paul and Mark and 
Luke, who wrote so much of the New Testament, were 
not apostles at all. 

4. If the Bible was intended by Christ and the apostles 
to be the rule of faith, would it not give us a full account 



* We except, of course, the occasion when he acted as though he 
wrote on the sand. 



THE BIBLE. 



47 



of the doctrines of Christianity ? Would not the writers 
tell us somewhere what we must believe and what we must 
not, what were our duties as Christians toward God and 
man ? But no ; they seem rather to have written by acci- 
dent, unsolicited, and in great part to particular churches 
or persons, and to correct local abuses. And there is no 
evidence of a mutual understanding among them that they 
were to write at all. 

The Gospels give us a very meager record of what 
things Jesus said and did on earth. How little is written 
of the forty days after the resurrection — days pregnant 
with importance ! The disciples must have known a great 
deal more than they wrote on this matter. Remember, 
they were continually in the company of Jesus during 
three long years. Realize this to yourself. One conver- 
sation a week for one year would have taught them a 
great deal — far more than they wrote. What, then, must 
they have learned from continual conversations with him 
for three years ! In the very last verse of his Gospel John 
wrote, But there are also many other things which 
Jesus did, which, if they were written every one, the 
world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the 
books that should be written." 

All this is still more true of the Epistles. They seem 
to presuppose a full knowledge of the Christian system, 
and were evidently intended as remembrances of the doc- 
trine already fully unfolded to them; so that Paul bids 
the Thessalonians to stand firm, and to hold the tradi- 
tions they had learned either by word or by his epistle." 

5. It is quite plain, then, that the disciples did not 
write under the impression that their writings were to be 
an indispensable rule of faith. To gather the whole 
Christian doctrine from their writings would be a huge 
task, demanding an acute knowledge of Scripture, a power 



48 THE BIBLE. 

of comparison, an ability to separate and explain obscure 
passages and judge of them by plainer passages — all 
which supposes a perfect knowledge of hermeneutics. 
This is a task above the capacity of the great bulk of 
mankind. And surely Christ would not institute a rule of 
faith impossible for the great majority of mankind to ap- 
ply — and this under the penalty of eternal damnation. 

6. If the sacred writers thought that the Scriptures 
were to be the sole rule of faith, would they not, think 
you, have taken special pains to make every sentence they 
wrote plain and clear and easily understood by all, even 
the most dull and ignorant ? And yet, is such the case ? 
Ah, our Protestant brethren have agreed to differ, alas ! 
and have given to the world many, many contradictory 
systems of religion, all taken from the Bible. If the Bible 
contains but one religion, divine and harmonious, whence 
these hundred warring creeds? How many an honest 
Protestant has thrown up the Bible altogether, and lost 
his faith, because of this very difference among sects, all 
professing to derive their religion from the Bible ! This, 
too, has sent many thoughtful men into the Catholic 
Church. And is it not plain to any one that, of these 
hundred conflicting faiths, ninety-nine at least must be 
wrong and spurious, and only one at most can be right ? 
Therefore the Protestant, according to his own showing, 
has at least ninety-nine chances to be wrong to one to be 
right. If the Catholic Church be right, he is infallibly 
WTong. There is no escape from this difficulty. 

My good Protestant friend, either the Bible is a plain 
book or it is not — it is a difficult book. If it is a difficult 
book, how can every man understand it so as to take his 
religion from it ? The most learned men in the world 
have been puzzled over many of its passages. Philip, 
the deacon, was answered by the eunuch, whom he asked 



THE BIBLE. 



49 



whether he understood what he was reading in Isaiah, 
"And how can I, unless some one show me ? " If it is a 
plain book^ why so many different interpretations ? Why 
set up creed against creed, altar against altar ? Why tear 
to pieces the seamless garment of Christ ? Why not agree 
on one interpretation ? 

7. You may perhaps object that it is not in accord- 
ance with the goodness of God to have left us a Bible so 
obscure and so difficult to be understood. Now this 
objection contains a sophism, inasmuch as it takes for 
granted the very thing in dispute, and presupposes that 
God meant the Scriptures to be the rule of faith. This is 
plainly a begging of the question — taking it as proved 
that every one can interpret for himself. But St. Peter 
asserts that Scripture is not to be so interpreted. " Un- 
derstanding this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is 
made by private interpretation." Hence it is evident 
that there must be an authorized commentary. 

From many parts of the Epistles we see that the 
apostles taught many things orally that they did not 
commit to writing. This we learn chiefly from St. Paul 
to the Corinthians and to the Hebrews. And when our 
divine Lord was asked why He did not explain more fully 
to the people. He said: "Because to you it is given to 
know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to 
them [the people] it is not given; therefore I speak to 
them in parables, because seeing they see not, and hear- 
ing they hear not, neither do they understand." Had our 
Lord intended to make the people the interpreters of His 
word, we can not explain His conduct in this and other 
similar passages. 

8. It is quite plain that the early Christians submitted 
themselves entirely to the teaching of the apostles and 
disciples. How else could they have learned to keep holy 



50 



THE BIBLE. 



the first day of the week, when the Scripture told them 
that the Sabbath was the seventh day of the week ? If 
Protestants to-day wish to keep close to the letter of the 
Bible, they should keep holy the seventh, and not the 
first, day of the week. By observing Sunday instead of 
Saturday, they have yielded to our tradition^ which they so 
much decry. And so of other things, such as the washing 
of feet, infant baptism, abstaining from blood and things 
strangled." It is only on the authority and the tradition 
of the Catholic Church that they do these things or avoid 
these things, irrespective altogether of the Scriptures. 
How inconsistent ! ^ 

Fmally, let me ask. Do the Scriptures themselves say 
that they contain all that is necessary for salvation ? They 
do not. Does any one writer in the sacred Scriptures say 
that he has written the whole Christian doctrine ? No. Do 
any number of them say that they agreed together to write 
the whole doctrine between them ? No. Who, then, has 
told the Protestant that everything necessary is to be 
found in the sacred book ? Nobody. He takes it for 
granted. And yet the contrary appears everywhere in the 
Scripture — that it is not a complete record; that many 

* It is an American poet who wrote : 

" Great is the Written Law ; but greater still 
The Unwritten, the Traditions of the Elders, 
The lovely words of Levites, spoken first 
To Moses on the Mount, and handed down 
From mouth to mouth, in one unbroken sound 
And sequence of divine authority, 
The voice of God resounding through the ages ! 
The Written Law is water ; the Unwritten 
Is precious wine. The Written Law is salt ; 
The Unwritten costly spice. The Written Law 
Is but the body ; the Unwritten, the soul 
That quickens it and makes it breathe and live ! " 



THE BIBLE. 



51 



things were done and said that remain unwritten ; and that 
a great deal was left to be taught by those who were sent 
to teach all nations. 

So much for arguments. Now for a few popular ob- 
jections : 

1. The text is adduced against me, " Search the Scrip- 
tures, for ye think in them to have life everlasting; and 
the same are they that give testimony of me.'' Now, even 
if this text contained a command to search the Scriptures, 
it proves nothing, for the search would be confined ac- 
cording to the context — to the prophetical parts of the 
Old Testament which regarded the coming of the Mes- 
siah. But can you prove that it expresses a command at 
all ? Many biblical scholars, ancient and modern, assert 
that the verb should be read in the indicative mood, thus : 

Ye search the Scriptures, for in them ye think^ etc.," and 
was meant as a reproof. Then, again, you must remem- 
ber that our divine Lord was addressing not the people, 
but the Pharisees, who were the acknowledged teachers of 
the law ; and these he was reproving for not knowing from 
the Scriptures, which they handled every day, that he was 
the true Messiah of promise. Thus the objection falls to 
the ground. 

2. The second popular objection is found in the text 
of St. Paul, **A11 scripture divinely inspired is profitable 
to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice; that 
the man of God may be perfect, furnished unto every good 
work." This passage is found in an Epistle from Paul to 
Timothy, and is evidently confined to those scriptures 
which Timothy had known from his infancy," and does 
not at all regard the New Testament which Timothy had 
never yet seen, as so much of it was not yet written at all. 
Besides, it is said by St. Paul that these scriptures were 
profitable. Nobody denies this ; but it does not at all say 



52 



THE BIBLE. 



that the Scriptures were sufficient or contained everything 
necessary. The Protestants themselves do not say that 
the Old Testament contains everything necessary to sal- 
vation. 

3. The third objection is framed in some such language 
as this: So long as the apostles lived, their teaching was 
to be received as an infallible commentary on the written 
word; but w^hen they died, the early Christians were de- 
prived of this resource, and had nothing left to guide them 
but their writings. 

This is the most futile of all objections. Were, then, 
the Church of Christ and its apostolic teachings to die 
with the apostles ? Did Christ say to his apostles, Go and 
teach so and so, and take care to commit your teachings 
to writin.ij:, as I intend that after your death what you write 
is to be the rule of faith for mankind ? Christ said noth- 
ing of the kind. He intimated the very contrary, when 
He said that his doctrines were to be taught all days, even 
to the consummation of the world. So, there was a change 
after the apostles' death ! The burden of proof rests with 
our adversary. A\'e hnd nothing of the change in history. 
Did the apostles die all on one day ? Indeed, they did not. 
And their disciples taught the very same that they taught, 
and died for the same teaching too. Besides, there was no 
rule of faith, in the shape of one book, for three or four 
centuries; and then not one in a thousand could read the 
book. Supposing this objection of any weight, it was un- 
kind of our Lord not to have established the art of print- 
ing in the apostolic age ; so many millions w^ould not have 
been lost for want of a Bible. It is certainly strange that, 
being a God of all goodness, He did not see to this. 

Outside all this there are yet some great difficulties in 
the way of the Protestant rule of faith. The first is the 
matter of inspiration. If the Bible is the rule of faith, it 



THE BIBLE. 



53 



ought to declare that it is inspired. And yet there is not 
one line, from St. Matthew to the Apocalypse, which 
makes any such declaration. And even if there were, 
that line should be itself inspired in order to bear testi- 
mony to the inspiration of the book. In the Catholic 
rule of faith all this is easily explained. 

The second great difficulty comes up with the ques- 
tion, What books belong to true Scripture, and what do 
not ? — in other words. What books are canonical ? Here 
is a great question for the Protestant. How can we be 
guided by a rule of faith until we know what composes 
the rule? And, as I told you in my last discourse, here 
the honest Protestant — honest or not, in fact — has to fall 
back on the testimony of the early ages of the Church. 
As soon as that Church emerged from the Catacombs she 
set her best scholars to work to collect the Scriptures and 
find out what were canonical and what were not. There- 
fore the Protestant admits that the early Church must 
have been guided by the Holy Ghost in this great work 
of determining what books formed the rule of faith. By 
this he abandons his own rule of faith and adopts ours. 
This difficulty, I take it, vnW never be solved. The Prot- 
estant can not prove the canon of Scripture without aban- 
doning his rule of faith. 

The third difficulty is a serious one. How can a Prot- 
estant feel certain that he has a true version of the Bible ? 
The Bible was not written in English. Centuries rolled 
by before it was translated. There were no less than four 
Protestant translations before the King James's Bible 
came; and they were all rejected by English Protest- 
ants as notoriously corrupt translations. Even the King 
James's version was openly assailed, and, though fre- 
quently corrected, still failed to give satisfaction. And 
here is the ^'revised edition" faring little better. How 



54 



THE BIBLE. 



can a candid Protestant apply his rule of faith ? He must 
study Greek and Hebrew for himself, and set to work ; 
and even then he will find other learned men differing 
with him. 

From this it would appear manifest that a Protestant 
can not consistently make a true act of faith. He may 
entertain a strong opinion^ but, with so many insuperable 
difficulties staring him in the face, he can not have faith^ 
properly so called. For, what is faith ? According to 
St. Paul, Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the 
conviction of things that appear not." The Protestant rule 
of faith, beset, as it has been shown to be, with difficulties 
insurmountable, can not give that firm and unshaken basis 
of future hope. Private judgment is avowedly the most 
fallible thing in the world, and has been the source of a 
thousand warring opinions. And yet St. Paul assures us 
that ''without faith it is impossible to please God." 

Now that we have spoken of private judgment, let us 
ask ourselves, AVhat precedent in sacred or profane his- 
tory have Protestants to justify them in private inter- 
pretation of the Scriptures? The Jewish people loved 
the Word of God. It was everything to them. But they 
never attempted to settle religious doubts or difficulties 
by a private appeal to that Word. No; the doubt was to 
be decided by the high priest and the sanhedrim, which 
was a council of seventy-two civil and ecclesiastical 
judges. If thou perceive," says the book of Deuter- 
onomy, ''that there be among you a hard and doubtful 
matter of judgment, thou shalt come to the priests of the 
Levitical race, unto the judge, and they shall show thee 
the proof of the judgment; and thou shalt follow their 
sentence; neither shalt thou decline to the right nor to 
the left. But he that will refuse to obey the command- 
ment of the priest, that man shall die, and thou shalt 



THE BIBLE. 



55 



take away the evil from Israel." Here, you see, the Al- 
mighty refers the Jews not to the letter of the law itself, 
but to the living authority, the ecclesiastical tribunal. 

It is marvelous how much money is spent annually in 
sending Bibles all over the heathen world. This has been 
going on for the last two centuries in England at a fabu- 
lous expense, and from this country there has been a simi- 
lar exportation for the past half a century. Yet go over 
these heathen lands and search out the results, and I as- 
sure you the most enthusiastic will be discouraged. I 
could occupy your attention half an hour this evening on 
merely quoting short passages from Protestant authorities 
on this matter, and all teach the utter failure of the sys- 
tem. Twenty-five millions of Bibles were sent from Eng- 
land alone, until in India they were so plentiful that there 
was no household use to which they were not applied. A 
Protestant writer has said, that in one Indian village the 
soles of the people's shoes were simply the covers of the 
Bibles. This declaration was made in view of the fact 
that the people at home thought there were as many con- 
verts as Bibles. And there are many good old people, 
both here and in England, who spend their thousands 
every year in this cause. 

Now, if we are allowed to argue from the failure to 
the inadequacy of the means, we must conclude that evan- 
gelizing the world by this immense expenditure in the 
matter of Bibles is not the system intended by God for 
the salvation of mankind. 

This, however, w^e leave to God. Our contention is — 
and we feel assured that we have established it — that the 
Bible is not the Christian Rule of faith, but that before 
it, and above it, Christ established a living Church to be 
the interpreter of the written Word and the unerring 
teacher of all mankind. 



THE CATHOLIC YOUTH IN HIS HOME 
AND IN SOCIETY. 



Delivered before the Traus figuration Total Abstinence Society. 

The subject on which I have the honor of addressing 
you this evening is The Catholic Youth in his Home and 
in Society." 1 like the theme, because it is becoming to 
my profession as a priest of God ; because of its teaching 
character ; and because, having my people's interest at 
heart, I prefer to treat of those matters which, from their 
practical character, would be of most benefit to all. I am 
here in the interest of our little Total Abstinence Society, 
which I love so much. I am here in the sacred cause of 
temperance; and I say without fear of contradiction here 
— for I shall not allude to the matter again — that no young 
man, be he rich or poor, gifted or unaccomplished, who is 
a victim of the accursed vice of intemperance, can possibly 
be a success as a Catholic youth either in his home or in 
society. He is necessarily a failure in life, a disgrace to 
his home, and a blot on society. With these few words as 
a premise, and in favor of the holy cause, I come direct to 
my subject. 

When God created man, my dear friends, He created 
him in honor and in innocence, and He placed him over 
all other created things on this earth. In fact, all created 
things w^ere made for man's use and for man's benefit. 
More than this : God stamped upon man the likeness of 
His own divine intelligence, endowing him v/ith a will and 
a reason little short of divine. But He gave him also 



THE CATHOLIC YOUTH. 



57 



liberty^ the power to do or not to do ; and on this great 
gift of liberty — this fatal gift, as pessimists might call it 
— all human morals hinge. 

With all these perfections, however — perfections which 
would secure heaven for every mortal — our first parents 
disobeyed and fell. And though some of the worldly wise 
— who are foolish — insist that God would not condemn 
Adam merely because he ate a fruit, the great fact stands 
that Adam deliberately disobeyed God, and abused the 
free will with which God had blessed him. ' He set up his 
created v/ill against the uncreated will of God, and he 
fell. 

Now, if Adam had never fallen there would be no 
question at all of sin, no more than there would be when 
treating of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was an excep- 
tion to our race. The youthful scion of humanity would 
have no inclination to evil, but would live a sinless boy 
among a sinless race, crowned, as Adam and Eve before 
their fall, " with glory and honor,'* and " made little less 
than the angels"; "gods," so to speak, "and sons of the 
Most High." But, alas for Adam's abuse of free will, we 
have humanity not as God would have it, but as it is. 

And here our subject begins to resolve itself into two 
parts: the youth (i) in his home and (2) the youth in 
society — the home life of the young man, and his life in 
relation to the world around him. 

I. The first domestic duty of the Christian young man 
is to honor and love the parents to whom, under God, he 
owes his existence. And it is the most natural duty in the 
world. The feeling is even instinctive. Yea, God's written 
word comes in not only to teach the duty of filial obedi- 
ence and love, but to illustrate its beauties and to declare 
the rewards consequent on its exercise. Think of the 
cases of Joseph and King Solomon, in the Old Testament. 
5 



58 



THE CATHOLIC YOUTH 



And in the New Testament, what can we have more 
charming than the example of the Saviour himself ? — the 
whole history of whose life, from the finding in the tem- 
ple to his thirtieth year, is summed up by the Evangelist 
St. Luke in the three words, Subditus erat illis " — He 
was subject to them; who, in deference to his mother's 
desire, though his time had not yet come, wrought the 
miracle at the wedding feast of Cana ; and who, though 
in agony on the cross, forgot not to procure a protector, 
in the person of the disciple he most loved, for the swoon- 
ing mother at his feet. 

Nor are there wanting examples in early Christian his- 
tory. What a glorious model for Christian youth is the 
great St. Augustine ! So tenderly did he love his mother 
that he merited the name of the good son." In her 
last illness," he tells us in the book of his Confessions, 
"she assured me that she was pleased with me. She 
called me her good son, and told me that I had never 
spoken to her a single word of which she could complain." 
His love for her was such that after she died he could not 
think of her without shedding tears. He frequently of- 
fered the holy sacrifice for her, and recommended her to 
the prayers of all the faithful who might read the book of 
his Confessions. 

I have dwelt thus long on this feature because I am 
convinced that the first domestic characteristic of a good 
young man is love for his parents. In fact, essentially 
bad qualities can scarcely coexist with it ; so much so that 
the saying, *^Show me a good son, and I will show you a 
good man," has been accepted as proverbial. 

Time would not permit us this evening to enumerate 
the many home virtues which should adorn the Catholic 
youth who aspires to an honorable manhood. We shall 
suppose him to have been reared religiously ; to have 



IN HIS HOME AND IN SOCIETY. 



59 



prepared diligently for the reception of the sacraments of 
the Church ; to have received them worthily and with 
fervor, and to be satisfied all his life long that his first 
communion day was the greatest and happiest he had 
ever known. We shall even suppose him to have passed 
through his school days, and to be now preparing to call 
his best domestic qualities into action in building up a 
home for himself. 

After the salvation of his soul, the first and most nat- 
ural duty of a young man is the building up and adorning 
and sanctifying of a home. This work should engross the 
attention of every true and honest youth. 

Once established in his new-made home, he should 
feel that all his hopes are centered there. His true world 
is there. That home is the one green spot in the desert 
of his daily life, to which he may turn in search of solace 
and of rest when there was none to be found in all the 
world beside. 

Ah ! the great social need of the age is Christian homes, 
A practical question this, How shall we make homes more 
attractive ? In country villages and small towns it is a 
comparatively easy task. And this, by the way, is a fair 
argument in favor of the Catholic colonization now in 
progress in the great West. In these new colonies are to 
be found the best specimens of manly youth and girlish 
innocence. But here in these great cities, in the vortex 
of nightly amusements, pool-rooms, theaters, political 
primaries, and gilded barrooms, it is sadly different in- 
deed. An innocent boy is often ruined in a single night. 
He goes, with his seniors, to a low theater. He drinks 
between the acts. ■ His passions are inflamed by sug- 
gestive songs, vulgar words, indecent sights, indelicate 
jokes. He drinks again when all is over, is led to resorts 
of vice, and is ruined morally — returning to his home 



6o 



THE CATHOLIC YOUTH 



quite another being. In the workshop, next day, he re- 
veals, perhaps vauntingly, his experience of the preced- 
ing night. Next Sunday morning his sister or his mother 
calls him to rise and go to mass. Ah, no ; he knows too 
much now. No mass for him. The devil has hold of 
him now ! And yet he feels sad, mayhap. The better 
instinct within him begets a spirit of moroseness and com- 
punction. Or, he may follow a spirit of despair, that leads 
him to go from bad to v/orse. And then the poor victim 
goes on heaping sin upon sin, until he becomes a scandal, 
committing such deeds in face of highest Heaven as make 
the angels weep. And all this while the non- Catholic 
youth, equally experienced, goes on as if nothing had 
happened. The tender conscience of the Catholic boy is 
stifled, the sacraments are ignored, purity is lost, and then 
comes the old story, " The worst is the best perverted " 
Corruptio optimi pessima "). And as a Catholic youth in 
his home that boy is a failure indeed. 

But, alas, how many enemies of home life surround our 
young men ! Could we suggest a few, we would name 
politics, the pool-room, even the theater and the club- 
house. The mere politician can not be a dutiful son, an 
innocent youth, a pious young man. The votary of the 
pool-room will sooner or later become a drunkard, unfit 
for a Christian home. And, unfair as it seems to assert it, 
the clubhouse youth can never be an ideal in the home cir- 
cle. As a rule, the club is fit only for the unmarried man 
of mature years, the confirmed, settled bachelor, whose 
parents have gone to join the majority; who has no one 
that misses him at home — no mother, no wife, no little 
ones; who merely exists, or boards, or lives in a flat. But 
for the mere youth, or the married man, or the father of 
children, the clubhouse is not only not the proper place, 
but is known to have often led to the wreck of home and 



IN HIS HOME AND IN SOCIETY. 



6l 



the ruin of the individual himself. So much regarding 
the home life of our youth. 

II. The Catholic youth has gone into the world to 
carve out his fortune, to begin " life." After having 
satisfied himself, before God, that he is fitted by Nature 
for the business he is about to learn — that it is, so to 
speak, his vocation — his first and all-absorbing desire 
should be to learn and to know that one business well. 
Is it a trade ? — let him be master of it. Is it law, book- 
keeping, medicine, engineering ? — let him forget all else 
and study that one branch. No matter what it is he has 
chosen, let him not be ashamed to be ignorant of a thou- 
sand other things if he know that one well. The day of 
universal scholars is gone. Life is too short, and there 
are too many things to be learned. No one brain can 
hope to grapple with the constantly increasing range of 
human sciences. Set your mind, then, on one branch, 
young man, and struggle to be master of that. Our cities 
just now are full of idle men. They know a little of 
everything. They fill the benches of our city parks; they 
roam about our streets ; they beg, they borrow, they 
steal. They have nothing to do, and they will remain 
unemployed simply because they do not know how to do 
any one thing well. 

And, after this oneness of aim and action, self-reliance 
is a most essential quality. Some young men are always 
waiting for something to turn up, for some one to do 
something for them. They are ever running after public 
men, who are perpetually putting them off, cajoling them 
with promises of which the realization is like a Will-o'-the- 
wisp, constantly eluding their grasp. It is said that a 
lobster, when left high and dry on the rocks, has not 
energy enough to work its way to the sea, but will wait 
for the sea to come to him. He dies for want of making 



62 



THE CATHOLIC YOUTH 



a slight effort. The sad suspicion haunts us to-night that 
our cities abound in human lobsters. 

The youth in society should endeavor to be a man of 
easy manners, gentle and affable. He should have no 
unreasonable prejudices. And this calls to my mind an 
incident which occurred lately as I sat at the table-ahote 
of a hotel at Cannes. The gentleman at my left said to 
me, in a rather loud tone, **Look around a gathering of 
any kind — this little assembly, for instance — and you will 
always find that there are some faces you naturally take 
to, while you have rather a dislike for others." ^* Defect 
of education," sharply remarked an English gentleman 
across the table. And he was right. Why should we 
conceive a prejudice against any one because of his ap- 
pearance? And, though I confess it never struck me be- 
fore that evening, I soon realized that it is a defect in 
education to permit ourselves to do anything of the kind. 
The most ill-favored exterior in the crowd may cover the 
mind which, on acquaintance, would please us most and 
prove most in harmony with our own. 

But it is not all head-work, or etiquette or manners, 
for the Catholic youth outside his home. The hearty the 
seat of all the best instincts, must be cultivated, too. The 
will must be trained to the good and beautiful, as well as 
the head — that is, the intellect — to knowledge and scientific 
development. This is a distinction which every young 
man beginning life should realize and appreciate. He 
must know how to balance head with heart. He is a 
formal creature in society if he be merely a scholar, void 
of those charming features of heart and of will which 
make up the complete man. And here come in the sweet 
influences of religion, which temper to a charming degree 
the mere knowledge of our best savants. Show me the 
man whose intellect only has been trained, and whose 



IN HIS HOME AND IN SOCIETY. 



63 



heart, whose will, has never been attuned to the beautiful, 
the supernatural ; who has been taught every science with- 
out even mention of the name of God — of God, who must 
be loved and adored in all, who inspires the love of good 
and the hatred of evil — show me such a man, and you 
will point out an anomaly, a monster. He may be a very 
admirable man, a marvel. Or she, if she be a woman, 
may be a beautiful pagan," as Beecher called the daugh- 
ter of one of our so-called infidels; but she, or he, is to 
all intents and purposes simply what we said — a monster. 
And a monster, as you know, is, physically speaking, a 
being some one of whose members is far more developed 
than any other member — who has an abnormal head, for 
instance, or a mammoth foot or a giant hand. And so, a 
man who cultivates the intellect, to the utter exclusion of 
the will, is, morally speaking, a monster. And this is the 
result of training without faith, science without religion, 
head-power without heart-instinct and will. 

Do you doubt this ? Look at Rome in her most 
glorious days. Why, if Dr. Parkhurst lived there then, he 
would almost despair ! Crime was simply rampant. Read 
the Epistle of St. Paul to the Roman people, begging of 
them to observe the commonest precepts of human mo- 
rality, the primary principles of the law of Nature. And 
yet, how grand was Rome that day ! When St. Paul wrote 
that letter Rome was in the height of her national and 
political power, in the noonday of her intellectual glory. 
Kings were her vassals, nations her provinces, the known 
world her empire. Her arms glistened under "the Pillars 
of Hercules," her banners waved on the Indian East. 
Nor was she less renowned for literary prowess. A galaxy 
of men of letters shed luster on the epoch, until it was 
known as the golden age, the Augustan era. Yet it was 
to such a people St. Paul wrote, and in such a strain. 



64 



THE CATHOLIC YOUTH. 



If you desire, then, O Catholic young man, to be a 
good member of society, to live with an eye to your eter- 
nal welfare, you must be virtuous in preference to being 
learned. You must cultivate the heart as well as the 
head, the will as well as the intellect. It is the cultiva- 
tion of the heart and of the will that will make you good 
men, good sons, faithful husbands, loyal citizens. And be 
assured that you will not love your country less because 
you love God and virtue more. Choose good companions ; 
choose good books. Avoid a bad companion, whether you 
meet him on the street in broadcloth or in a library en- 
veloped in sheepskin. Shun the contaminating literature 
of the day — the bad literature that supposes no virtue, 
that fears no hereafter, that considers not God. Read the 
works that will elevate your heart while they store your 
mind with useful knowledge ; and side by side with 
these, near where your hand will rest oftenest, preserve a 
copy of the Bible to be the salt of your literary shell 

And let us hope, for the sake of everything that man 
holds dear and Heaven approves and consecrates, that the 
day will never come when such men as you shall cease to 
work as lay apostles in the vanguard of God's militant 
Church. 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 

Delivered at the Fro-cathedral^ Jay Street. 

At all times and with all peoples some places have 
been deemed more holy than others. Who will say that 
the garden of Eden was not, in the early days of creation, 
the most favored spot on earth ? Mount Ararat was 
honored as the place where the ark rested after the del- 
uge; and so of other places as human history unfolded 
itself. The land of Canaan was a holy place to the de- 
scendants of Abraham, and Sinai was even more directly 
blessed. Mount Horeb, the Dead Sea, the snow-capped 
tops of Libanus, Mount Hermon, and Mount Carmel, the 
coast of Joppa, the cities of Sodom, were all instinct 
of religious story, suggestive of God's love or of divine 
wrath. And so religious memories became associated 
with streams and vales, mountain and town and forest, 
till the footprints of the Man-God consecrated the fresh 
valleys of Palestine and made sacred the stone streets of 
her cities. Then saints, men and women who loved Jesus, 
came to live on earth, and the sons of earth learned to 
venerate and loved to kiss the ground their feet had 
trodden. Altars, shrines, entablatures w^ere erected on 
spots connected with their histories, and man came and 
worshipped at the altar, and prayed at the shrine, and 
read with religious fervor the simple story of their lives. 
This instinct grew with man's growth and became part of 
man's nature. 

Nor did the Church of the New Law discourage the 

(65) 



66 ' EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



feeling, so natural in itself and so exalted in its tendency. 
Far from it. From the days of Peter, her first supreme 
ruler, down to those of Leo, her present one, she has 
been characterized by a spirit of reverence for her saints. 
She has held them up to be admired of her children, and 
pointed out as holy ground the places made memorable 
by their lives. She has snatched the dust from their 
tombs, placed it on her altars, and handed down their 
memory and their name to distant generations. And in 
doing so she was but gratifying an instinct peculiar to 
her children ; for, though weak and poor and mean of 
ourselves, we are ever anxious to perpetuate the memory 
of those who have deserved well of their kind, ever de- 
sirous to visit and revere those places made sacred by the 
saintly ; always ready to pay a tribute of honor to the 
great, the victorious, and the good. This is the chief 
root of all devotion — this love of honoring the good — 
giving origin to shrines and holy wells and religious pil- 
grimages. The grave of those we love is a sacred place ; 
the tomb of the saintly is hallowed in our eyes ; but the 
shrine of a saint is a very sanctuary. 

Now, if the homes and the shrines of ordinary saints 
be so sacred to us and to the Church, how prized should be 
the places favored by her whom Heaven has placed and 
the Church has recognized as the first and most perfect 
of God's creatures ! What should be our veneration of 
those places hallowed by the footsteps and consecrated 
by the visits of her who is the bright Mother of the 
Church's Spouse ! There never was in heaven, and there 
never shall be on earth, a creature so favored by God as 
she of whom we speak. She came forth from the hand of 
God like the morning dawn, fair as the moon, bright as 
the sun " — " all fair," " without spot or stain." Power un- 
earthly was predicted of her ; for, forty centuries before 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



6; 



she came, it was foretold that she should crush to death a 
mighty serpent. Purity celestial was prepared for her ; 
for she was to be Mother of the All-pure God. Beauty 
and grace and comeliness surpassing were showered upon 
her, till finally the all-holy, all-great God came down to 
her, took up his abode within her, and " the Word was 
made flesh." 

It is of Mary we would speak, then, in giving a little 
history of those spots on our poor earth she has enriched 
by visits and by miracles ; of Mary, the Mother, who 
weeps at man's ingratitude, and who comes to tell man- 
kind that she has long stayed the heavy hand of her Son's 
anger ; of Mary, " The Immaculate Conception," who 
comes to tell an innocent peasant child to pray for the 
conversion of sinners." 

We shall not treat of all the shrines of Our Lady in 
Europe ; that were a momentous task indeed, for they 
are many and full of history. But, selecting three of the 
most important, we shall briefly unfold their story — that 
of Loretto, La Salette, and Lourdes. 

LORE T TO. 

There is a house at Loretto of which Catholic tradi- 
tion tells a truly wondrous story. It says that this is the 
very house in which our Blessed Lady lived at Nazareth 
— the very house where she received the angelical saluta- 
tion ; where she consented to become the Mother of God, 
and where the ineffable mystery of the Incarnation took 
place. Here in this house, then, Jesus himself lived from 
the return from Egypt to the beginning of His public life. 
Here he worked with Joseph, and here Joseph died. Now, 
Nazareth is very far from Loretto. Nazareth is in Pales- 
tine, Loretto in Italy. Many miles both of land and wa- 
ter lie between them. But the Catholic tradition is that 



68 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



this house was transported from Nazareth to Loretto. To 
one who has no faith, to a stranger taken by surprise, 
this would seem a most improbable event, fit only for a 
romance. 

And yet, for six hundred years, pilgrims from all parts 
of this earth have flocked to Loretto ; and no one thinks 
of going to Rome v/ithout paying a visit to the " Holy 
House." There must be something in it. Kings and 
princes have gone there with splendid offerings. Abun- 
dant favors and graces are said to have been obtained 
there, and we are told that if miracles are a proof of im- 
posture, Loretto must plead guilty. Let us examine a 
little. What is the tradition ? 

On the loth of May, 1291, on a small eminence near 
the coast of Dalmatia, there appeared a house — a house 
which nobody in that country had ever before seen. (Dal- 
matia is more than halfway from Nazareth to Loretto.) 
The house measured about thirty-two feet in length by 
thirteen in breadth, and eighteen feet high, with a chim- 
ney and a belfry. The astonished people came in crowds 
to examine the building. They saw that it was old — very 
old — and, inside at least, resembled a chapel. Within was 
an altar surmounted by an antique wooden cross. To 
the right of the altar was a statue of the Blessed Virgin 
with the Divine Infant in her arms. To the left was a 
fireplace and a small cupboard or closet. The fame of 
this strange house spread rapidly abroad, and thousands 
came, knelt down and prayed as if by instinct. It be- 
came a shrine indeed ; and many who suffered from in- 
firmities were restored to health by a visit to this mysteri- 
ous temple. 

The pastor of the place, a pious and venerable man, 
was ill at the time ; and from his bed implored Mary the 
Mother of God — who he felt sure had something to do 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



69 



With this house — to assist him in his great infirmity. On 
the following night, between sleeping and waking, he be- 
held Our Lady in splendor, who told him that the mysteri- 
ous chapel had been her own on earth, where she was born, 
brought up, received Gabriel's great message, conceived 
the Son of God, and watched him till his thirtieth year. 
She added that after her. decease the apostles converted 
the house into a chapel, of which the altar was consecrated 
by St. Peter. It was now transferred by angels, she said, 
from Nazareth, away from the treachery of the infidels. 
She promised him health in proof of the reality of the vis- 
ion. He awoke restored, hastened to the Holy House, and 
gave thanks. 

He related all to his joyous people; but, not satisfied 
with this, like a wise and prudent man, he instituted an in- 
quiry into the evidence of the case, and induced the gov- 
ernor of the country to send messengers to Nazareth. 
Four intelligent men, one of whom was the priest himself, 
went to Nazareth. What was the result ? They found the 
people of Nazareth mourning over their loss, bemoaning 
with tears the absence of the Holy House of Mary. Fur- 
ther inquiry proved that the time of its disappearance from 
Nazareth was exactly the time it was first seen in Dalma- 
tia. In Nazareth the commissioners saw nothing but the 
foundations, fresh as though the walls had been recently 
separated from them. They measured them, and the foun- 
dations corresponded exactly with the walls of the house 
in Dalmatia. The joy of the Dalmatians knew no bounds, 
and the house became the resort of pilgrims from the most 
distant parts. Their joy was not to last, however. On 
the night of the loth of December, 1294, some shepherds 
on the Italian side of the Adriatic beheld a house borne 
aloft across the sea and alight in a wood about a mile 
from the shore. The splendor that surrounded the house 



70 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



satisfied them of its supernatural character. As a matter 
of course, the entire neighborhood was soon apprised of 
the fact. The wood where the house rested had been 
known as Laurentine, and so the house was called " The 
Holy House of Loretto." 

Such is a brief history of the translation of the Holy 
House of Loretto ; and now, without examining the his- 
torical evidence of this extraordinary event, we may men- 
tion a few facts to assure us of its authenticity. 

In the first place, the thing is not an impossibility. 
God could as easily do it as sufter it to remain undone. To 
divine power it is as nothing. The miracle has numbers 
of precedents in Holy Scripture. Habacuc was borne 
by an angel from Judea to Babylon (Daniel, xiv, 35). Our * 
divine Lord was borne by Satan to the pinnacle of the 
temple, and he himself says that if we have faith as a 
grain of mustard-seed we shall be able to say to a moun- 
tain, "Remove from hence,'* and it will obey (Matthew, 
xvii, 19). We shall say nothing of well-authenticated mira- 
cles in the lives of the early saints. 

Nor is it very wonderful that God the Son would wish 
that his own house on earth should be out of the hands of 
his enemies. The house of Nazareth stood there in the 
midst of infidels who , desecrated everything Christian. 
And this in spite of God's own prophecy, "I will glorify 
the house of my majesty and the place of my feet." 
Surely never was a house more worthy of glory than the 
humble chamber in Nazareth where the Word was made 
flesh. It is not wonderful, then, that Jesus would take it 
from the Saracen and place it to be honored among the 
children of his Church. 

Secondly, the house disappeared from Nazareth just at 
the time when the power of the Christians in the Holy 
Land was completely destroyed. Christian power received 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



71 



its final blow at the battle of Acre, the last bulwark of the 
Christians. This fact is most suggestive. 

Thirdly, the house is certainly not in Nazareth now. 
Where is it ? A church is built over where it had been, 
and on its walls you read the inscription "ZT/V Verbum 
caro factum est.'* 

Fourthly, that the house was in Dalmatia and disap- 
peared is proved from the fact that Nicholas Frangipani, 
Governor of Dalmatia, caused a small model of it to be 
erected over the spot in Dalmatia where it had stood. In 
his last will he directed that a magnificent church be 
erected over it, which was done in 1453. This church was 
visited by Pope Urban V, who presented it with an ancient 
picture of Our Lady, to console the people, he said, in 
their grief at having been deprived of the Holy House. 
And on a public tablet erected by the same governor was 
painted the legend, The house of the Blessed Virgin 
came to Tersatto May 10, 1291, and departed hence 
December 10, 1294." And in the memorial church itself 
you read, This is the place in which was formerly the 
Holy House of the Blessed Virgin of Loretto.'* 

Finally, the material of the house, the stone of which 
it was built, was identical with the stone found in and 
around Nazareth, and resembled only very faintly, if at all, 
any Italian stone. 

Tradition is most steady and steadfast in handing 
down to us this mysterious event, and when tradition is 
uncontradicted you maybe convinced of the truth of what 
it tells. Listen to what Dr. Newman says of tradition : 
" Tradition, not authenticated, but immemorial, is piHtna 
facie evidence of the facts which it witnesses. It is suf- 
ficient to make us take a thing for granted in default of 
real proof." Therefore the onus p7'obandi — the task of 
proving the contrary — rests wuth those who would de- 



72 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



stroy the existing belief. If tradition was not steady on 
this point — if the translation of the Holy House was not 
true — the world would have instantly risen up and stamped 
it as an imposture and a lie. The enemies of religion are 
literally driven to the wall. They can make but two an- 
swers : Either people conspired to build the house in a 
single night, with no witness that was not a participator 
in the conspiracy — and built it so that it looked old; or 
the building must have been old and well known, but its 
history lost, all agreed to substitute a lying fable in its 
stead. Either hypothesis is as absurd as it is ridiculous. 

The Holy House stands to-day at Loretto, and of 
sixty-five Popes who have filled the chair of Peter since 
the miraculous translation took place, forty-four have 
given it their sanction. The Church is slow to sanction, 
and the Popes are never eager to commit themselves. 
Miracles beyond number have taken place at Loretto. 
Cures beyond number have been effected. Special bless- 
ings have been poured upon saints who visited there — 
Francis Xavier, Francis Borgia, Peter of Alcantara, Joseph 
of Cupertino, Camillus of Lellis, Charles Borromeo, Stan- 
islaus, Aloysius, Francis de Sales, M. Olier, and others. 

When the traveler visits the Holy House of Loretto 
to-day; when he there beholds a church whose ornament 
and sculpture are among the rarest on earth ; when he 
sees the countless faithful of every clime bent in humble 
supplication and lost in gratitude to the good God and 
his holy Mother, he has only to conclude that, if this is not 
the finger of God displayed in miracle, all human evidence 
is upset, and he beholds a miracle greater than the re- 
ligious miracle he is called upon to believe. 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



LA SALETTE, 

Near the foot of the French Alps, surrounded on all 
sides by rugged mountain summits, and about sixty miles 
from the railroad that stretches along the valley of the 
Rhone, is the quiet little village of La Salette. Forty-six 
years ago it was unknown save to its immediate neighbors, 
the humble peasantry of Dauphine; but to-day its fame 
is coextensive with the Christian world, and legion is the 
name for those whom faith and devotion to Mary have 
caused to visit it. 

It was Saturday, September 19, 1846, that two children, 
cowherds, returned from the mountain and told their 
master a wonderful story. About midday, they said, they 
had eaten their little meal, allowed their cows to wander 
around, and fell asleep on the grass near a fountain, which 
was at that time dry. Awaking, they went in search of 
the cows, which had strayed over the brow of the inter- 
vening hill, and seeing them from the top of the hill, the 
children returned to fetch their empty provision bags. 
Arrived there, a light brilliant as the sun met their eyes. 
This light opened, and within it they distinguished the 
form of a lady more brilliant than the light itself. She 
looked sad, and seated herself on the stones near the dry 
fountain, in the attitude of the most profound grief. 

She was clothed in a white robe studded with pearls, 
white shoes, and roses of every color were about her feet. 
Upon her breast was a crucifix ; on the left of the crucifix 
a hammer, and on the right the pincers. Such, at least, 
was the description the children gave at the time. But 
as Maximin, the boy, now observes, how could ignorant 
children explain such an extraordinary sight ? Melanie — 
this was the girl's name — grew frightened, and dropped her 
stick ; but the boy, becoming gallant all at once, told her 
6 



74 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



to take it up, adding that if it meant to do them any harm 
he would give it a good blow. The lady, beckoning them 
near her, bade them in a tone of sweetest music not to be 
afraid. They skipped up to her with all gladness, assured 
of her good will. Then the lady stood up between the 
children, and, weeping, spoke to them. She told them that 
she could not any longer keep the heavy arm of her Son 
from falling in anger on the people, who, not heeding her 
intercession for them, continually violated the Sabbath, 
swore by the name of God, and lived like infidels. She 
added that if the people were not converted there would 
come a great famine ; the nuts would become bad, the 
grapes and the potatoes would rot. Then the lady paused, 
and it seemed to the little girl that she was speaking to the 
boy, though she heard no words. Turning to Melanie, she 
spoke to her, though Maximin heard her not. But after- 
ward, when all was over, the children spoke to one another 
about it, and each declared to the other that the lady im- 
parted a great secret, never to be revealed till the proper 
time came for it. Neither told the other what the secret 
was. 

The lady then told the children always to recite their 
morning and evening prayers. She complained of the 
small numbers who attended mass on Sundays — of the 
many who violated the abstinence of Lent. Maximin, who 
said, in answer to a question from the lady, that he had 
never seen corn that was spoiled, was reminded by her 
where and when he had seen it, and how his father had 
shown him some once, which went into dust on being 
rubbed between the hands; and the boy answered, "Oh, 
yes, ma'am, I remember now; just now I had forgotten." 

Telling them to cause this to be told to all the people, 
the lady moved on, crossed the rivulet, and, ascending the 
slope opposite, she stopped and repeated the same words. 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



75 



The children followed her, and saw her gradually rise from 
the earth in a globe of light which they thought was a 
second sun. One said to the other, 'Tis God, or my 
father's Blessed Virgin." The boy answered, "If I had 
known that, I would have asked her to take me with her 
to heaven." 

Such was the apparition of La Salette. The news 
spread. The master of the boy brought both children to 
the parish priest, a simple-hearted old man, who, in his 
delight, announced it to his whole congregation next Sun- 
day. He was at once removed by his bishop for his indis- 
cretion, and a priest from a distant part of the diocese sent 
to La Salette. The priests or the bishop would have noth- 
ing to say or do with the matter. They left the affair to 
stand on its own merits. Before many days, however, a 
person was cured at the fountain where the apparition 
took place, and where no water, except a mere streamlet 
now and again after severe rains, had ever been seen 
before. 

The children were questioned, cross-examined, as well 
singly as together, before private individuals, courts, 
judges, chapters of dioceses, always with the same re- 
sult. It was the same explanation all the time; and the 
story of one never varied an atom from that of the other. 
They were ignorant children ; could scarcely say the J^ater 
and Ave, and were proverbially stupid at school the little 
time they spent there. They had never seen one another 
till the day before the apparition, when Maximin was hired. 
The employer put Maximin at other work immediately 
after, and one child never desired the society of the other. 
It seemed, indeed, as though Providence had arranged 
things to prevent all doubts and deceptions. The clergy 
abstained altogether from any action in the matter. If 
the miracle was genuine, they said, it will prove itself; if 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



not, the imposture will soon be shown up, as the world is 
sharp enough to find it out. 

And what has the world found out? What has the 
Church found out? The Church, so slow to believe and 
to act, has at length been forced by the weight of evi- 
dence to give its sanction. Miracles unnumbered attest 
the finger of God. In after-years both children were in- 
duced to send their secret in writing to Pope Pius IX. The 
two envelopes, sealed, were brought to Rome by two dis- 
tinguished ecclesiastics and handed personally to the Holy 
Father. 

What is the verdict of the faithful ? Within twenty 
years after the apparition more than a million persons 
visited La Salette. A noble church surmounts the holy 
spot ; cast-iron crosses are erected on the open plain, each 
having a medallion representing one of the fourteen sta- 
tions of the Way of the Cross. On each anniversary the 
twenty-six confessionals are thronged. All over Europe 
altars are erected to Our Lady of La Salette. The most 
eminent ecclesiastics, bishops, and our Holy Father him- 
self, have examined the evidence, and leave us no room 
even for slight hesitation. If miracles are a proof of a 
divine work — and that they are our Lord testifies in his 
answer to those whom the Baptist sent to him — the appa- 
rition of La Salette is established, and one must exclaim, 
with Richard of St. Victor, " Lord, if this is error which 
we believe, it is by thee we are deceived." 

It was doubted for some time whether the Cure of Ars 
believed it, and one day some friend tried to find out. The 
cure took the man to his room, raised the bed curtain, and 
showed, hanging over his pillow, a picture of Our Lady of 
La Salette. 

Melanie is now a Carmelite nun in the Convent of Cas- 
telmare, near Naples. Maximin is a member of the Papal 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



77 



Zouaves — at least was up to very recently. He has written 
a pamphlet on his connection with the miracle. 

LOURDES, 

Who has not heard of Lourdes, world-famed Lourdes 
— of its wondrous history, its shrines, its pilgrimages, its 
miracles ? The lovely little village sits calmly at the foot 
of one of the Pyrenees and looks into three smiling val- 
leys. The Gave-de-Pau winds rapidly around the base 
of the hill and turns the noisy wheels of several busy 
mills. Perched above the town, like a hoary sentinel 
guarding the favored spot, you see the aged citadel, once 
deemed impregnable. Higher yet, and away in the dim 
distance, the towering Pyrenees look down upon you, 
stern and severe in their caps of snow, while around you 
is every variety of lake and river and woodland. The 
lily-white spire of the Basilica of Our Lady soars up to 
equal height with the top of Massabielle rock, and the 
holy grotto beneath looks darker and deeper for the 
whiteness and the height above it. 

The lazily winding road that leads to the grotto is 
lined at either side with the tents of the venders — little 
shops of canvas, in which is every variety of beads and 
medals, crosses and religious souvenirs of the grotto. 

Meanwhile the road is crowded with travelers. They 
are dressed in every style and they speak every language. 
Some are buying, some chatting, some praying; while the 
voices of the venders, and the noise of the little railroad 
engine, and the music of the bees, mingle in strange vari- 
ety. Some are walking listlessly along, wearing huge rosa- 
ries as necklaces ; some are carrying water in tin cans 
from the fountain. There is a party of Spaniards, and 
here, marching in procession, is a pilgrimage from Belgium 
stopping to salute a pilgrimage of Bretons which numbers 



78 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY, 



two thousand. Slowly toiling up the side of yonder hill, on 
the top of which are planted three crosses, is a party per- 
forming the Stations of the Cross ; while pouring in and 
out of the magnificent church and down to the grotto are 
people from every quarter of the globe. 

It is evening, and a grand procession is on foot, every 
member with a lighted candle surrounded by a paper 
shade at the end of a staff. Now it is winding around 
the base of the hillside and away through the green val- 
ley. It looks like a golden serpent playing with its own 
graceful coils in the rich meadow-land. 

And while the air outside is filled with the music of a 
thousand voices singing praise to God and thanks to the 
Lady of Lourdes, pious groups within the church surround 
the numerous confessionals, and pray beneath the banners 
of all lands to the gracious Queen of all men. Such is 
Lourdes to-day. 

But what does all this mean ? Why all these people ? 
This is a mean little mountain village, obscure, and by its 
position hidden from mankind. How has it become so 
famous ? Let us learn. 

On the nth of February, 1858, a little girl, Bernadette 
Soubirous by name, the daughter of a poor man, was gath- 
ering sticks just across the way from that cave. Two 
other little girls were with her. They had crossed a 
stream, and Bernadette was untying her shoes to follow 
them, when she raised her hands to her eyes, as if shield- 
ing them from some light ; and, half shrieking, she fell 
down on both knees. A truly marvelous sight then met 
her gaze. Above the grotto, in a niche fashioned by Na- 
ture, stood a lady of superhuman brightness. Her face 
was heavenly, her robes white, with a cincture of blue at 
the waist, and a thin veil reaching down to the end of her 
robe. A chaplet of beads, whose stones were as white 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



79 



drops of milk, strung together on a chain like golden 
straw, hung from hands which were fervently clasped. 
Other ornaments she had none. Her hair was long, and 
her lips were motionless. 

The two girls, who had crossed the stream, had merely- 
noticed Bernadette on her knees : that was all. They 
were struck, however, by her emotion when she joined 
them and asked them if they had seen anything. They 
said No. Bernadette was silent. But they prayed her to 
tell what she had seen. After much worrying, and a prom- 
ise of secrecy, she told them all. But the promise was not 
kept. The child's mother heard it, and she forbade Ber- 
nadette to go again to the grotto. 

The mother, however, was prevailed upon, the next 
Sunday afternoon, February 14th, to let the child revisit 
the Massabielle rocks and cave. The girls took holy 
water with them. They began to recite the rosary. Ber- 
nadette became positively transfigured. " There she is ! " 
she muttered. The others saw nothing extraordinary. 
Bernadette shook the holy water, but the apparition only 
smiled and bowed and came nearer, and remained until 
they finished the rosary. On the way home they told all, 
and the news began to spread. 

With her mother's permission Bernadette, at early dawn 
of Thursday, the i8th, having heard mass, went again, 
with her two companions, to the grotto. She outstripped 
the others in the walk, and was first to arrive and begin 
the rosary. The apparition stood before her and beck- 
oned her to draw nearer. Some women, who had stealth- 
ily followed, arrived in time to notice the ecstatic change 
in the girl's features. The lady made a gesture, and Ber- 
nadette drew nearer and into the inner recess of the 
grotto. Then the apparition asked her to come for fifteen 
days longer. Bernadette promised to do so, and asked if 



8o 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



the women might come also. The apparition said, Yes, 
I desire to see multitudes." That i8th was market day; 
and the news spread through the entire department. 

And so, on her succeeding visits, Bernadette was ac- 
companied by hundreds, and finally by thousands. They 
all came and gazed on a little girl who said she saw and 
spoke to a something invisible to them. Opinions in the 
community were, naturally, varied and varying. Lawyers 
and doctors spoke and argued. The parish priest, a most 
estimable man, kept aloof, and instructed his assistants 
to do likewise. " Let us wait," they said ; and the bishop 
approved their action. 

The next apparition was a remarkable one. Thousands 
went with the child. Her angelic face told what she saw. 
The apparition seeming sad of countenance, the child 
asked, " What is the matter with you ? " " Pray for sin- 
ners," was the reply, and the vision was over. 

That evening the authorities interfered, and Bernadette 
was arrested. The people wished to prevent the arrest, but 
the priest said, "Let the law take its course." Soubirous, 
however, the child's father, insisted on taking her home. 

On the next occasion the apparition called the child 
by name, and disclosed to her a wish that a chapel be 
built over the grotto. And Jacomet, an unbeliever, who 
was present at this vision, wrote in his " Impressions," 
" If the blessed in heaven sign themselves with the sign 
of the cross, they must do it as Bernadette in her ecstasy 
does it." Next day, at the vision, she was heard repeating, 
" Penance, penance, penance." 

" Drink at the fountain," was the burden of the vision 
of February 25th. The girl went toward the Gave. " Not 
there," said the apparition — " here ! " The child saw no 
water, but, instinctively as it seemed, began to scoop into 
the earth. There was dampness, then moisture, then 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



8l 



water in the shape of a little worm. Then the girl stooped 
and sipped and swallowed a liquid that was little better 
than muddy. The crowd behind her looked on in mute 
amazement. The thread of water increased, gained vol- 
ume, and rolled down to the Gave. The jet grew larger 
and larger, and the news of the new fountain spread 
around. And while people were talking of it, pro and 
con^ a laborer — a poor quarryman, who had lost his eye- 
sight years before — was cured by the water. The little 
pitcherful his daughter brought him was muddy, but one 
application cured his all but lost eye. His physician ex- 
amined it, tested it, and pronounced it healed. Other 
physicians and oculists were forced to testify to the same 
effect. 

As the fountain was now fairly large, it was easy to 
drink from it. Many came and drank. A mother, whose 
child was given up for dead — in fact, just about to be 
placed in a shroud — ran with her charge and plunged it 
into the trough which was made in reverence by the 
quarrymen. The people around thought the child would 
perish in the cold water. For over twelve minutes the 
mother kept it there. The child showed signs of life; 
next morning opened its eyes, breathed freely, and recov- 
ered. Every physician in the neighborhood has left a 
written statement that the boy could not, naturally, have 
survived the severity of the bath The boy was alive and 
well in 1874. 

Up to this, however, the apparition did not identify 
herself — did not say who it was she claimed to be. Some 
women told Bernadette to ask her. In reply to the girl's 
importunity the apparition answered, " Je suis ITmmacu- 
lee Conception." The child never heard the words be- 
fore, and, journeying back to town, kept repeating, 
LTmmaculee Conception." 



82 



EUROPEAN SHRINES OF OUR LADY. 



Then the authorities determined to put a stop to these 
exciting gatherings. To no purpose, however. On Eas- 
ter Sunday, April 5th, fully ten thousand persons collected 
around the child at the grotto. This was a notable occa- 
sion and the last of the visions. The child was now well 
known all around, and was highly regarded, of course. 
Rich families offered to adopt her. Rich dov/eries were 
tendered to her parents for her. In vain. When she 
reached her eighteenth year she became a nun in the 
convent of the Sisters of Charity at Nevers. There she 
was known as Sister Mary Bernard. She is now with 
God — died the death of a saint ; and the nuns who sur- 
vive her say that she was no visionary, but a plain, com- 
mon-sense, practical Sister of Charity. 

But the infidel world grew busy. The waters of 
Lourdes, fountain of unnumbered miracles, have many 
times been examined and analyzed; and the universal 
verdict is that it is plain, natural water, with a little lime- 
stone nature, but void of the slightest therapeutical or 
healing qualities. 

All kinds of commissions have in turn sat upon alleged 
miracles, and have pronounced them genuine. All kinds 
of enemies have sprung up to defame the glory of Lourdes, 
and have given up the task. Even Lasserre, the im- 
partial historian of Lourdes, is not only a noble advo- 
cate of the truths in question, but is himself a living testi- 
mony of one miraculously healed. He was practically 
blind until he applied the Lourdes water to his eyes. And 
the whole Christian world — people, priests, bishops, and 
Supreme Pontiff — now pray on bended knees and with 
hearts of filial joy to our dear, benign Lady of Lourdes." 



A SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 



Delivered at the Seventieth Anniversary of the Pro-cathedral. 

" But you are a chosen generation, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, 
a purchased people, that you may declare his virtues who hath called you 
out of darkness into his marvelous light." — I Peter, ii, g. 

While their connection with the Church of Christ is 
daily reminding all Christians of the kindly providence of 
God in their regard, there are some in the vineyard who are 
peculiarly favored indeed. The words of our divine Lord 
to the centurion, "Amen, I say to you, I have not found 
such faith in Israel," seem to involve a very significant 
comparison. And when he adds, " Many shall come from 
the east and the west, and shall sit down in the kingdom 
with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; but the children of the 
kingdom shall be cast into exterior darkness," he forces 
us by a kind of gentle suasion into the same trend of wist- 
ful thought. Nor can we lose sight of those other words 
still more suggestive of compliance with God's grace : 
Woe to thee, Chorazin ! woe to thee, Bethsaida! for if in 
Tyre and Sidon were done the things that were wrought 
in thee, they would long since have done penance in sack- 
cloth and ashes." 

In this same line of thought I say to you to-day : O 
favored people, you are privileged in your day and gen- 
eration. Much has been done for you. You have been 
blessed with faithful pastors, even from him who first 
offered the holy sacrifice in a little corner house not six 
squares from here, down to the zealous incumbent who 

(83) 



84 



A SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 



guards your spiritual interests to-day. You are a chosen 
generation, in that your ancestors worshiped here in 
peace and in honor, while many of their fellow-country- 
men were toiling far away on prairie and mountain side 
and river, without the comforts of practical religion in life, 
and without its consolations at their dying hour. 

And here, to-day, you celebrate a double event, a 
dual festival — the seventieth anniversary, namely, of your 
church's dedication, and the feast of your patron saint. 
Acknowledging, then, that you are indeed a favored peo- 
ple, it behooves you to make your lives one continued 
manifestation of his glory who hath called you into his 
admirable light. 

I. Six years before religious emancipation was achieved 
for the Catholics of Great Britam and Ireland, this church, 
since considerably enlarged, was dedicated to divine serv- 
ice by the Right Reverend John Connolly, second Bishop 
of New York. The benevolent James Monroe was then 
President of the United States. The Catholics of Long 
Island were few and scattered, and only seventy sub- 
scribers, after three months' labor and search, could be 
got together to start the first Catholic church in Brooklyn. 
But though these men were not giants in their day, they 
worked with fervor and faith, and they even builded wiser 
than they knew. The hand of God was with them. The 
city of that time was only commensurate with the first five 
wards of to-day, and not at all so thickly peopled. For 
years the little Brooklyn congregation, unable to support 
a priest, were satisfied with a weekly visit from one of the 
clergy of St. Peter's, Barclay Street, New York. But in 
his own good time God sent faithful shepherds to live with 
the flock ; and the zealous Walsh, the gentle Smith, and 
the large-hearted McDonough succeeded each other, till, 
in the year of grace 1853, there was a man sent from 



A SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 



85 



God whose name was John " — and he became first Bishop 
of Brooklyn. You all know how well the saintly Turner 
aided Bishop Loughlin in the administration of his fast- 
growing charge ; and to me it always seemed suggestive 
that the first Brooklynite ordained for the diocese should 
become its first vicar general. Delicacy forbids me to 
say more than a word of him who so happily presides here 
to-day in the episcopal chair of this flourishing diocese. 
We all know how sweetly he combines in himself the con- 
templative and the active, the high accomplishments of 
the Christian bishop with the intellectual energy of the 
man of affairs. In all this, I say, you are a favored, a 
purchased people. See that you are grateful to him who 
has ushered you into such admirable light! 

2. And for titular of this church they chose none 
other than St. James, the Greater, apostle, cousin-ger- 
man of the Man-God, our Lord Jesus Christ. With his 
brother, the gentle John, James was called, as they both 
sat by the lake; and leaving their nets, they followed 
Christ. And James was one of the three whom Jesus 
most loved. He was present at the Transfiguration on 
Mount Tabor ; at the raising of the ruler's daughter; at 
the agony in the garden. Yes, and after the crucifixion, 
not satisfied with evangelizing two sections of the Orient, 
he set out for Spain — as the Roman breviary, relying on 
authentic records, assures us. From that country he took 
with him to Rome seven young men, who returned to 
their native Iberia as bishops. Yes ; and to-day San lago 
is patron of Spain ; and Compostela, where his sacred 
body rests, is the Mecca of Christians, the place of holy 
pilgrimage for the faithful of every clime. As his chil- 
dren, you are a favored people ! 

Yes, favored. Oh, think of those who since then have 
fallen away from the Church. Alas! the lands for which 



86 



A SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 



Other apostles shed their blood are Christian lands no 
more. The grand old East of Athanasius, of Nazianzen, 
of Cyril, is Christian East no more. Antioch, where once 
Peter sat as bishop ; Alexandria, the home of Christian 
science, the cradle of theology ; Constantinople, that 
empress of the East, that in the pride of the imperial 
presence strove to contest the supremacy of Rome — these 
three patriarchates, one and all, fell from their first fervor 
of faith, and the Moslem hordes swept over them and ex- 
tinguished their Christian life. But, far away, in sunny 
Spain, the faith which James had planted was bearing 
hundredfold fruit, producing saints and sages, preparing 
for the day when Columbus would open up the missionary 
fields of the West, where the sons of Spain would preach 
the gospel to the American Indian, teaching the untutored 
savage the names of Jesus and Mary. 

Yea ; and the once favored East was losing when 
Patrick, our father in the faith, raised the standard in the 
Isle of the West — the Island of Destiny," indeed — a 
standard which not exile, persecution, or death could 
ever strike down or destroy. Britain lost the faith, and 
sought to quench its light in her sister isle; but the hand 
that would blight the ''island of Saints " only made her a 
nation of missionaries; and the expatriated children of 
Patrick became in God's providence the bone and sinew 
of the American Church. 

Here, however, it may be objected : The success of the 
American Church is mainly dependent on early immigra- 
tion. Vv^ell, what if it be ? We deem it providential, even 
if it be so. There is no loss anywhere. They tell us that 
the waters of the ocean, as in their ceaseless surgings 
they fret away their shores, take nothing from one conti- 
nent they do not give another. The sun that sets in the 
West is sunshine to the East.- It is plainly providential; 



A SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 



87 



but loyalty to faith is ever rewarded. " The children of 
the kingdom may put their hand between them and the 
light ; they may offend the sensitiveness of the Holy 
Spirit; they may turn away from God; they may lose the 
faith J but the loss is all their own : while from the East 
and from the West will come others more responsive to 
the gentle touch of illuminating grace, more docile to the 
quiet voice of the Holy Ghost ; and they will recline in 
the kingdom with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob." 
They will ease their weary hearts in the fullness of the 
home of faith, and sigh and drop a tear over the wreck of 
those who once sighed and wept for them. O my brethren, 
what a sad change ! What an awful interchange of light 
and darkness, darkness and light ! 

And as it is with nations, so is it with individuals. 
Mysteries of Providence — Judas and Paul, Arius and 
Augustine, Luther and Loyola! 

What a mighty revolution in the soul of the great 
apostle when the light shone around him on the road to 
Damascus, and the voice spoke, and the name of Jesus 
first made itself felt to him ! What an active life of living 
faith Augustine began after he took the book whose 
Tolle-Lege " proved to him the fountain of Christian 
life! What a happy siege and a happy wound for Igna- 
tius Loyola which occasioned his reading the lives of 
the saints and abandoning the life of the camp and the 
battle-field ! And what a saint Xavier became when 
that same Loyola whispered into his ear, "What doth it 
profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own 
soul?" 

But we need not go so far to look for triumphs of 
faith, or to exhort us to gratitude for the "marvelous 
light" that is ours. No; this graveyard here, where the 
rude forefathers of the parish sleep, and yonder suburban 



88 



A SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 



cemetery, where thousands of Celtic hearts have stolen to 
rest, attest abundantly the triumphs of faith, and of faith 
under bitter trial and obloquy. 

Be proud, then, of the faith of your fathers. It is 
not an effete faith, but a faith that can stand the test 
of subtle cynicism and of undisguised hate ; a faith that 
vivifies nineteenth-century Summer Schools and World's 
Fair conferences ; a faith which James and Patrick 
brought to the Iberians and Celts in the days of old, 
only to be transferred to the willing shores of this ideal 
republic. 

Oh, precious is the gift of faith, whether it come in 
youth, before the ripening mind can measure its price, or 
in after-time when the mind has matured into manhood ! 
And yet that inheritance may be forfeited, and it has been 
forfeited, by individuals and by nations, from the day of 
Pentecost to the present hour. But it shines in the heart 
of God's Church to-day as undimmed and as brilliant as 
it shone on the day when it was symbolized in tongues 
of fire. 

Glorious Church of God, depository of divine faith ! 
Empires have risen and fallen away ; the palaces of kings 
have been emptied, and the trophies of their kingdoms 
crushed; petty dynasties have sprung up and decayed; 
but the Church has outlived the vicissitudes of time, and 
braved the storms which have swept away the mighty 
works of merely human institution. But it must needs 
be so, for otherwise the Word of the God of truth had 
failed. And he has said that heaven and earth might 
pass away, but his word never — no, not one iota of his 
doctrine. 

All hail, then, to this glorious Church of Jesus Christ! 
— one in her faith, holy in her Founder, catholic in her 
diffusion, apostolic in her establishment. Truly blessed 



A SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 



89 



the lot of those who are faithful members of her fold! 
Miserable their lot who, professing themselves her chil- 
dren, live at variance with her spirit and her doctrines ! 

I have done. Two great lessons learn you this 
day. First, cherish the history and revere the memo- 
ries associated with this dear old mother of churches ; 
honor the memory of those who made its existence pos- 
sible ; emulate their faith, and pray for their eternal re- 
pose. 

Secondly, bear in mind that you are all called to be 
saints, even as was your great patron. St. Paul, in the 
letter which he wrote under the influence of the Spirit of 
God to the Christians of the Roman Church, tells them 
that they are ^'the called of Jesus Christ, the beloved of 
God, called to be saints." And in several of his other 
epistles he makes use of the same or of similar expres- 
sions. And with the strictest and most vigorous adher- 
ence to truth, these words meet with their application in 
the case of every soul in the Church of God, The called 
of Jesus Christ, the beloved of God, called to be saints." 
Yes, saints, however much the truth may startle you. 
Saints God wishes us to be. He has placed in our hands 
all the means toward that end; and ours the fault if such 
be not our happy destiny. 

O sweet and sacred name of Christian ! Let us never 
forget that this name separates us, the children of light, 
from the mere sons of earth. We have to live in the 
world, but we are not of the world. We have to live 
with worldlings — to think and act very much as they ; 
but we must ever bear in m.ind that our portion, our 
inheritance, can not be with theirs. We are the followers 
of a crucified God incarnate. The world was his enemy ; 
it must be ours too. His victory consisted in overcom- 
ing the world ; ours must consist in a perfect estrange- 
7 



go 



A SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 



ment from its false maxims — in a perfect conformity to 
God's will ; so that, realizing our vocation, that we are 
^' the called of Jesus Christ," " a chosen generation," we 
may make our lives one perpetual manifestation of his 
goodness who hath called us out of darkness into his mar- 
velous light. 



ADDRESS TO GRADUATES. 



Delivered at St. Leonaj'd's Academy, Brooklyn. 

My dear Young Friends : Amid the applause which 
so deservedly greets you this evening, accept, I pray you, 
a word of sincere felicitation from one whose happiness 
in addressing you is marred only by his inability to do so 
worthily and well. 

To the Catholic boy life brings few happier days than 
that on which, amid the smiles and plaudits of those who 
love him best, he bids adieu to the walls of his Alma Mater, 
The world smiles upon him ; and he loves life all the more 
because he sees only its sunny side, and dreams not at all 
of its clouds. 

But you must not cherish the illusion that you have to- 
night finished your education. Alas ! too many of our 
young people, male and female, " have finished their edu- 
cation." Why, my dear friends, to cease studying now 
would be to give up the very position you have been strug- 
gling to attain. Too many have done this in the past. 
Where, now, I ask, are all those who have graduated from 
our institutes of learning? We saw in the papers of that 
time how brilliantly they passed, how eloquently they 
spoke, what high promises they gave of a bright future. 
Perhaps we went to see them receive their diplomas. We 
heard the applause that greeted them; we saw the bouquets 
flung from loving hands to their feet, and listened to the 
congratulations showered on their immediate relatives and 
friends. Alas ! they finished their education that evening, 

(91) 



92 



ADDRESS TO GRADUATES. 



complacently folded their arms, and settled down in ease 
to live on the fame of their parchment. 

Be not imitators of such as these. Continue to be stu- 
dents in the real sense of the word, remembering that you 
are going out into the world not to join its rank and file, 
but to be the officers of its people. For this your training 
here is supposed to have fitted you. This is your future in 
life if you are true to your trust, to your own ambition, to 
the hopes of your masters, your parents, your well-wishers. 

But what I wish to impress on you to-night is this: 
that, graduates or not graduates, success in the world 
before you does not depend on your becoming great, or 
famous, or notorious. No ; act well the part in life that 
falls to your lot; discharge your duties conscientiously; 
be good sons, good citizens, good Christian men, and you 
have attained success indeed. If you are not called upon 
to do extraordinary things, see to it that you endeavor to 
do ordinary things extraordinarily well. Many a poor 
man has been a blessing to this world, though he made no 
noise in the world and died little better than a mendicant; 
while thousands have died rich and well known, who were 
morally and intellectually bankrupt. 

Oh, my dear young gentlemen, viewed in the light of 
another world — of the measureless future beyond the grave 
— human success is a poor bauble indeed. The divinest 
life ever lived on this earth was not, viewed humanly, a 
success. And he who copies that life most closely, and 
lives true to his own self and to his fellow-man, is the 
truly wise, the really successful. Keep me innocent, O 
God ! " exclaimed Caroline of Denmark ; " keep me inno- 
cent : make others great.'* It is not great men we wish our 
boys to be. Be they good men, good citizens — Christian 
men ! 

If you have not already determined on a fixed purpose, 



ADDRESS TO GRADUATES. 



93 



"a calling" in life, see to it at once that you know in 
what department your future is to lie. Let not the evil 
example of careless, purposeless students deter you from 
working out at once the path of life you are to tread. In 
every school, college, seminary, and university are there 
careless pupils, intellectual nonentities, who despise rule, 
confine themselves to each other's company, and are testi- 
ly weary of discipline. They speak loftily, nevertheless, 
of their future. They will enter for the bar, or for medi- 
cine,, or for the civil service generally ! Well, they are usu- 
ally worthless fellows, and when you meet them in after- 
life you find them canvassing for insurance companies or 
peddling cheap publications on commission. This is their 
highest graduation in life, poor fellows ! And the country 
abounds with them. They have nothing to do, because 
they do not know how to do anything well. The really 
good workman is never idle, unemployed. The man who 
devoted the energy of his young life to learn any one thing 
w^ell, who was satisfied only when he knew that one thing 
as well as or better than any one else — that man you never 
see unemployed. Instead of seeking employment, he is 
sought after. He may be only a mechanic, but he is mas- 
ter of his position, and therefore can afford to be as high- 
minded as a statesman. He may be only a toiler, but he 
can be as noble as a prince. He may not be a learned 
man, but he can make a first-class boot or shoe, or run 
a first-power engine, or shape a perfect bridgeway. 

Last summer, in company w^ith a clergyman, I met a 
colored man at a seaside restaurant. He moped curiously 
through our Breviary; and being asked whether he could 
read Latin, he replied very emphatically: No, sah, no; I 
can't read no language but my own. But, look heah : I 
can open more Saddle Rocks in a given time than any 
white man in Kings County." That man knew his ov/n 



94 



ADDRESS TO GRADUATES. 



business well — was a success — could command good wages. 
That he might be able to play the banjo on a Canarsie 
pleasure boat or a Rockaway pavilion would not detract a 
whit from his success in life, nevertheless. Some few great 
men have been great at two things. Michael Angelo was 
a success in three spheres. These are exceptions, how- 
ever. And if you inquire and think, you will find that 
nearly all successful men in practical life were men of 
oneness of aim, concentration of purpose. If you would 
succeed in life, then, you must not try to know too many 
things to the exclusion of the one thing which it is your 
business to know. A Jack-of-all-trades, we are told, is 
usually master of none ; and a knife that claims to be at 
once a knife and a file and a saw and a corkscrew and a 
toothpick, is generally wretchedly unfit for any one of 
these purposes. 

William Gray, the great Boston merchant, had been a 
poor man in his early life. One day he censured a man in 
his employ for having done some work in a slovenly man- 
ner. The mechanic retorted : ^' I tell you what, Billy Gray, 
I sha'n't stand this from you. I recollect when you were 
nothing but a drummer in a regiment." And so I was," 
coolly replied Mr. Gray; "and so I was a drummer. But 
didn't I drum we//, eh ? Didn't I drum well ? " 

If you ask me, then, what, in a nutshell, I mean, it is 
this: Aim to know well your part in life; to act it well, 
for there all the honor lies. Use industriously the one or 
two or five talents given you by God. Knowing once 
what you have to do — whether to lead an army or make a 
horseshoe, to harangue a senate or set up type — learn to 
do that well, because it is the duty of your life. Then, if 
you do not win success, you will have done the next best 
thing — you will have deserved it. 

And bear in mind that you are going out into a world 



ADDRESS TO GRADUATES. 



95 



of progress. We live in an age in which men bend all their 
energies and genius to make new material discoveries and 
gain more and more control over physical Nature. They 
are succeeding. Already the lightning has been won down 
from the heavens to serve human purposes ; steam is an- 
nihilating space ; the telegraph and the telephone are 
bringing distances together ; the mysteries of the sea are 
now an open book ; while the very air we breathe and the 
sunbeam that fails upon us are analyzed, weighed, and 
measured. Men call this progress ; and it is. 

As a consequence, it would seem — why, we know not — 
there is a lull in religious progress, if we can use the term. 
In the ardor of material advancement and civilization, there 
is a tendency to neglect eternal teachings, to trifle with eter- 
nal truths. And so an unholy and to a great extent a 
godless world is the world you are ushered into to-night. 
But be assured that God is a necessity in this world, patient 
God though he be. If there were no God,'* said a famous 
Frenchman, it would be necessary to invent him.'* This 
saying, smacking of impiety, is only another way of telling 
us that without God there would be no order, no law; no 
obedience that would not be slavery, nothing moral that 
would not be hypocrisy. None but a great woman could 
have said : " Christianity dispels more mystery than it in- 
volves. With Christianity it is twilight in the world ; with- 
out it, night." And if Rome and Greece of old, with their 
sculptors, orators, and painters, had not been filled with 
the idea at least of a God and of the divine, they would 
not now be the admiration and the despair of an intensely 
imitative world. 

From what we have said, you must not, my young 
friends, infer that in the arena of life it is to be all strug- 
gle, all work, and no play. Far from it. Both mind and 
body will need relaxation. We are told that St. John the 



96 



ADDRESS TO GRADUATES. 



Evangelist, while on the island of Patmos, was one day 
amusing himself with a bird. A hunter, passing by, stood 
in astonishment and gazed intently at the saint, who 
promptly inquired for the cause. I am struck with 
amazement," said the hunter, " to see you, who are so 
much esteemed for wisdom and sanctity, engaged in so 
trivial an occupation." The apostle remarked that his 
observer's bow-string was loose, and inquired why he did 
not keep it taut. " Oh, were I to do so," said the hunter, 
my bow would soon lose its elasticity and become use- 
less." ^* The human mind," then observed the evangelist, 
^' is like your instrument : it would be destroyed by per- 
petual tension." But oh, the kind of recreation to choose! 
That is the question, and may prove one of the difficulties 
of your young lives. Suffice to suggest here that prayer, 
the holy sacraments ; the fear of God, and your own com- 
mon sense, will direct you. 

Above all and before all, " to your own selves be 
true " — to your immortal souls, to your eternal aspirations. 

What shall I do lest life in silence pass ? " 

And if it do, 
And never prompt the bray of noisy brass, 

What need'st thou rue ? 
Remember aye the ocean deeps are mute ; 

The shallows roar ; 
Worth is the ocean — Fame is the bruit 

Along the shore. 

"What shall I do to be forever known? " 

Thy duty ever ! 
" This did full many who yet sleep unknown."—- 
Oh, never, never ! 
Think'st thou, perchance, that they remain unknown 

Whom thou know'st not ? 
By angel trumps in heaven their praise is blown, 
Divine their lot. 



ADDRESS TO GRADUATES. 



97 



" What shall I do to gain eternal life ? " 

Discharge aright 
The simple dues with which each day is rife ! 

Yea, with thy might. 
Ere perfect scheme of action thou devise, 

Will life be fled, 
While he who ever acts as conscience cries 

Shall live, though dead. 

Seek ye, therefore, first, gentlemen, the kingdom of 
God and his justice, and be assured on God's own word 
that all things else shall be added unto you. Launch out 
into the stream of life bravely, fearlessly. Go out into 
the world even as the apostles — for you are lay apostles 
— at the bidding of Christ, in the name of the most holy 
Trinity, satisfied that, as he has pledged his perpetual 
presence to his struggling Church, so will he lovingly 
abide with its militant members to the end of time. 
Good night ! 



"ELEVENTH-HOUR" LABORERS. 



Delivered in the Church of the Transfiguration, 

Reading over the gospel parables, we can not but 
notice that our Divine Lord taught His lessons of highest 
wisdom in the simplest forms of expression. He usually 
presented them in captivating parable. This He did, not 
because He desired to bring in the aid of mystery to sol- 
emnize His utterances, but, on the contrary, that the poor 
and the ignorant as well as the rich and the learned — 
Lazarus as well as Dives — might easily understand Him. 
At that time, as to-day, in Eastern countries, the parable 
and allegory were used by all classes in the communica- 
tion of ideas. The parable before us beautifully opens to 
the awakened mind a world of thought, and no doubt had 
more effect on those to whom it was addressed than a 
lengthened discourse couched in language less suggestive. 
In its simple form lie beautiful pearls of celestial wisdom, 
arresting the eye of faith and inspiring the soul. Its final 
words assume the form of epitome and present it clearly: 
Many are called, but few are chosen." What do these 
pregnant words import ? It would seem to many that they 
are words of awe-inspiring meaning. Yet there is nothing 
either in the text or in the parable calculated to dishearten 
the Christian, or cause him to falter on the road to that 
higher life which is the reward of the just. But there is 
in it that which should stimulate all to greater devotion, 
larger effort, nobler resolve. The kingdom of heaven 
spoken of is the Church of God. The laborers are the 

(98) 



" ELEVENTH-HOUR " LABORERS. 



99 



children of the Church. In the jealousies of the laborers, 
their claims for precedence and a greater reward, Jesus, 
the divine vintner, saw a type of the contentions and the 
troubles, harmless perhaps in themselves, which were to 
characterize the future of his Church. And hence, what 
was seemingly addressed to His immediate and personal 
followers has an application and an interest for all of 
God's people; and even we crowded in on the mental 
vision of the Redeemer when he spoke these words. 

We are striving, be it hoped, to earn the reward prom- 
ised us after death. We are called to labor in the vine- 
yard. We were called at our baptism, and at other periods 
of the day of our life. But may not those who come after 
us be preferred before us ? And who shall say the labor- 
ers employed at the eleventh hour should not receive what 
the Master chooses to give them? The text discloses, by 
implication, the fact that at the time Jesus uttered this 
parable there were among the people of Judea chronic, 
habitual grumblers — men who were not content with what 
they received from their employers so long as they saw 
others, whom they deemed less worthy, remunerated at 
the same rate. And as we know that complainers of this 
stamp were not confined to that age or country, the lesson 
taught by our Lord comes home to us with full force and 
application. We are not to question the motives of the 
great and good Master in remunerating all the workmen 
equally — the one who came at the eleventh hour equally 
with those who came early and had borne the burden of 
the day, and the heat. Who knows. The men who entered 
at early morn may have worked wearily, without spirit, 
unwillingly. They may not have culled earnestly, or 
pruned diligently, or killed the destructive worm, or 
propped up the dying branch, or nourished the hungry 
root. The man who came in at the eleventh hour, and 



lOO 



"ELEVENTH-HOUR" LABORERS. 



who also received his penny, may have attracted his Mas- 
ter's eye by his willingness, his assiduous zeal in the work. 
But, of course, the grumbling workmen could not see this ; 
or, if they did, it was only a fresh incentive to their dis- 
satisfaction. The Master, however, anxious for the har- 
vesting of the fruits of His vineyard, sees at once the 
merit of the eleventh-hour laborer, and chooses to pay 
him also a penny. What discouragement should there be 
in this for the majority of the laborers? Instead of being 
cast down, nourishing within their breasts envious, narrow 
feelings, or giving way to gloomy despondency, should 
they not rather take to themselves new strength of good 
resolve, manfully fight their infirmities, and, applying 
themselves diligently to the work given them to do, 
strive to gain the favor and love of their Master ? Yea, 
they and we should see in this the great mercy of the 
Master; His goodness to those who came in late, and per- 
haps were late through their own fault. Oh, it is a just 
characteristic of our divine Lord — mercy and compassion. 

Again, there should be no despondency. Many are 
called to do the work, few are chosen for special favors. 
Look at Christianity itself. In its infancy it was like a 
young vineyard. Many were called to labor, to follow 
Christ, to bear His cross, to testify of Him before men, and 
even to die in His cause. But how few were chosen to be 
His special agents in illuminating the world with the new 
divine light ! Though the mission of Christ was a call 
to all mankind to enter the vineyard and labor for the 
reward promised at the end of the day, it yet demanded 
but a few chosen representatives. John was the disciple 
Jesus most loved ; Peter He chose chief of the twelve ; 
James was with Him at His transfiguration ; but Paul, an 
eleventh-hour apostle, was also chosen ; and Paul's his- 
tory is suggestive in this, that there is no record that they 



"ELEVENTH-HOUR" LABORERS. 



lOI 



who labored with him, who began earlier in the day and 
had already borne the burden and the heat, complained 
that he received his penny when he was assured of the 
divine favor. No. Paul grieved that he was late in the 
field, that he was born out of time," as he himself ex- 
presses it; but he "pressed forward tov/ard the mark of 
his high calling " all the more earnestly in consequence, 
and the result was that he taught more, traveled more, 
suffered more, wrote more, than any other of the chosen 
ones. 

My brethren, God will choose His instruments in His 
own time, at His own pleasure, and under the circumstances 
He deems fit, wholly irrespective of our poor, powerless 
opinions and valueless ideas of justice and of right. To 
some he will give great gifts, to others lesser gifts, but to 
all sufficient grace. Worms of the earth, we must not 
dare to question his wisdom or call into doubt the justice 
of his decrees. We must toil and toil, nor pause too long 
in the hours of labor, for "the night cometh when no man 
can work." Working faithfully and with a single eye to 
our Master's interest, we must not be too presumptuous or 
too confident of a reward higher than our fellow-toilers, 
but in cheerfulness and charity labor to cull the rich 
grapes of grace for the wine of life immortal. 

This is the lesson, then, taught us in the parable — 
humble resignation to God's will, charity toward all, con- 
tentment with our reward. We are all, then, called to 
labor, and this not only at the time of baptism, but at the 
third, sixth, and ninth hours — that is, at every period of 
our life. But have we obeyed the call ? Are there any of 
us still loitering in the m.arket places, slothful and cold 
and careless ? May it not be fittingly asked of many here 
this morning, "Why stand ye here all the day idle?" 
You can not say that it is because no one hath hired — 



I02 "ELEVENTH-HOUR" LABORERS. 

that God has not called you, since He has been calling 
you every hour of your life, and is calling you even yet ! 
He desires the salvation of all — of called and of chosen. 

And oh, my brethren, before we close I would ask you 
to pray that God in His mercy would continue to send 
eleventh-hour laborers into His vineyard — Pauls, Augus- 
tines, Loyolas, Ozanams, Mannings ! By your prayers much 
can be done. Many a Paul may be struck by a light from 
heaven ; many an Augustine may take up the book, whose 
" ToUe Lege " will prove a wellspring of grace to his soul 
and of glory to the Church of God. Our prayers may 
create, in God's mercy, many an Ignatius Loyola, who, 
awaking from dreams of military glory, may yet shed 
luster on God's militant Church. Our prayers may rescue 
from the whirlwind of heresy many Newmans and Man- 
nings and Brownsons, who will stand out boldly before 
the world and attest, in words of silver-tongued eloquence 
or in letters of gold indelible, the glory, the truth, and the 
beauty of God's own Church on earth. May God grant 
it I And may we in turn prove ourselves valiant soldiers 
of His militant Church, so that Jesus, standing at the 
gates of His heavenly vineyard, may invite us in, and hail 
us happy citizens of His glorious Church triumphant ! 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



0611^67-6(1 at St. Jos6pJis CatJudml, Buffalo^ iV. Y, 

The Cross and the Crescent — or, in other words, the 
Church under infidel persecution — is the subject of our dis- 
course this evening. And in truth it is a wide subject — wide 
in its history, wide in its importance, wide in its bearings 
on the individual interests of every country on the face 
of the globe. It will unfold to us momentous epochs in 
the Church's history — epochs dark with crime and red 
with slaughter. It will bring us through days of Roman 
tyranny, to the time when Mohammed, with the sword 
across the Koran, swore to set up the dreamy poetry of his 
sensual religion in every town and temple of the East. It 
will bring us to the scorching shores of Morocco, where 
the Moor, with the crescent floating in the Mediterranean 
waters, embarked in hosts unnumbered to overrun the 
fair land of the Spaniard. It will lead us, too, to the land 
consecrated by the life and labors and the death of Jesus 
Christ, the Man-God, where we shall witness the noble 
struggle between His cross and the crescent of the Chris- 
tian-hating Saracen. Nor shall our subject close with the 
Crusades, for it will bring us to the walls of beleaguered 
Vienna, to join the glorious pageant that follows the vic- 
tory of John Sobieski ; while the infidelity of later times, 
more subtle than the infidel persecution of earlier days, may 
occupy for a moment our attention toward the close. 

What is the Cross, and what is the Crescent ? 

The Cross can be spoken of and viewed in a two- 

(103) 



104 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



fold way. There is a material cross, and the cross as 
an emblem. The first is formed simply by placing across 
each other at right angles any two oblong pieces of mate- 
rial. But the cross, by excellence, in the mind of every 
Christian at the mere sound of the word, is the awful and 
ignominious instrument upon which man's redemption 
was wrought, upon which Jesus the Redeemer died. It 
was the burden which He bore up the rugged, stony hill ; 
the weight under which He three times tottered and fell ; 
the wood for His own immolation ; the death-pile of a God. 
To it was He nailed, feet and hands; to it was attached 
His title in derision ; upon it He was raised above earth, 
and there in seven gasping sentences He taught the world 
volumes of love and forgiveness, till finally, hanging from 
His bleeding wounds. He died. This is the material cross 
which was buried by the Jews; over the site of which, 
seventy years later, the Romans built a Temple of Venus. 
This is the material cross dug up from the earth under 
the eyes of Queen Helen. This is the cross for which 
Heraclius battled six long years, and which he finally 
wrested from the barbarous Persians who had carried it 
away from Jerusalem. This is the cross which that em- 
peror, barefoot, carried on his shoulders through the 
streets of Jerusalem, amid the prayers of an exulting 
multitude, and set up to be worshiped on the hill of Cal- 
vary. Finally, this is the cross now found in particles and 
preserved by pious communities all over this habitable 
globe. 

Such is a brief history of the material cross. But, the 
cross is a7i eitiblem, too ; and oh, what an emblem ! Here, 
this evening, when we speak of the Cross, we evidently 
mean the Church. The Cross and the Church have long 
been synonymous terms. The history of the Cross is the 
history of the Church. When the Cross was profaned, 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



105 



the Church was in mourning; when the Cross was exalted, 
the Church exulted. 

From the morning of the resurrection, from the day 
that the Church issued forth pure and beautiful from the 
hands of the Holy Ghost, the Cross was a source of glory 
and of hope to the Christian. St. Paul must have felt 
proud of the Cross when he exclaimed, God forbid that 
I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
It was the Christian's joy in persecution. Without it he 
had lost courage in the savage tortures of the amphithea- 
ter. It was the Cross, luminous and leaning against the 
sky, that dawned brightly as the morning out of the dark 
night of persecution before the enraptured eyes of Con- 
stantine and his troops ; and since that day it has been the 
ensign and the glory of every Christian prince. 

And the Crescent — what is it ? It is a figure borrowed 
from one of the moon's phases. It is a half-moon in 
shape, exhibited in gold or paint or embroidery on a 
barbarous nation's flag. It was unknown for centuries of 
the Cross's history. It was the standard of the infidel ; 
and, as the Cross became identical in meaning and interest 
with the Christian Church, the Crescent and antichristian 
warfare meant one and the same thing. As the history of 
the Cross was the history of the Church, the history of 
the Crescent was the history of the Mohammedan, the 
Moor, and the Saracen. It is the coat of arms of the 
Turkish Empire to-day. It has been successively the 
favorite emblem of the Moor, the Greek, and the Turk, 
and is frequently seen surmounting the minarets of Rus- 
sian churches. Its followers meant it to be the emblem of 
success and spread of empire, as the word itself — cresceiit^ 
increasing — would signify. And they did increase in 
power and spread of sway, as we shall see. 

The Cross and the Crescent were destined to meet. 

8 



I06 THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



They were destined in history to flaunt at each other on 
many a bloody field. Infidelity was the sworn enemy of 
the Cross, and no persecution could be too severe, no tor- 
tures too terrible for her. But the Church was prepared 
for trial. Centuries of persecution had inured her to suf- 
fering. She had been cradled in adversity, nurtured in 
storm and trouble and blood. Peter and John were cast 
into prison almost immediately after the crucifixion of 
their Master; the blood of the martyred Stephen purpled 
the pavements of Jerusalem. James, its saintly bishop, 
came next. And when Peter was crucified on the Roman 
hillside and Paul beheaded on the Ostian Way, dark and 
darkly ominous seemed the future of the Church. The 
pilots were swept from the helm when the waves beat 
fiercest against the little bark, yet buoyantly she outrode 
the storm. Then read the dispersion of the apostles, 
their trials, and their martyrdom, and you have scanned 
over the first dark page in the Church's history. Turn the 
next leaf, and see how opposition continued and grew and 
widened and failed. The fires of persecution, growing 
less in the East, were fanned by a renewed hatred in 
Rome. Oh, who will pen the history of Roman martyrdom ? 
Who will relate the history of those cruelties which make 
the blood run cold to think of ? — racks, lions, the Tarpeian 
Rock, the Tiber, and the ocean ! Virgins, noble youths, 
grand old men, tarred and fired to light the streets, or 
slowly butchered to make a Roman holiday.'* Then 
echoed the amphitheaters to the applauding shouts of 
thousands, as some golden-haired Agnes sank bleeding to 
the sand, or the unerring axe severed the beautiful life of a 
Cecilia ; or the fierce javelin quivered in the streaming side 
of a Sebastian ; or as, louder than the shouts of the savage 
multitude, rose the roar of the forest lion as he sprang 
upon some aged pontiff. Again and again the yellow 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



107 



Tiber bore its sainted burden of martyrs to the sea. Oh, 
no wonder that the Christians lay hid beneath the earth! 
No wonder that Diocletian struck a medal with the in- 
scription, The Christian name has been blotted out." 
But the blood of the martyrs was the seed of apostles. 
Ah, surely the Church was inured to trial ; she was pre- 
pared for persecution. She was ready for the Arab Mus- 
sulman, the Moor, and the Saracen. 

Having nobly survived Roman tyranny and the Roman 
Empire, and become commensurate with the civilization 
which it spread, the Church was destined to win unfading 
laurels in other fields, to do battle in a conflict of VN^hich 
the scene shifted from Arabia to Spain and from Spain 
through Europe to the Holy Land ; and here, as every- 
where, she came out triumphant, her garments reeking, 
indeed, with the blood of her fairest and bravest, but ever 
bearing in her Heaven-directed hand the palm-branch of 
victory. 

From the far East came a mighty wave of invasion, 
destined in time to sweep over the fairest portions of 
Europe and the Orient, coloring its ruthless waters with 
the best blood of the nations, and everywhere thwarting 
the beautiful growth of Christ's kingdom on earth. On 
the crest of this wave came the hitherto unknown name of 
Mohammed. This man became the father of a mighty race, 
the prophet of a visionary faith, which blended into one 
the idolatry of Arabia, the Mosaic belief of the Jews, and 
the Gospel. Left an orphan at an early age by the death 
of his father, he was thrown on the world and his friends, 
and his youth was spent in driving caravans to the neigh- 
boring markets. At twenty-five he entered the service 
of a noble widow, who soon rewarded his fidelity by her 
hand and her fortune. Genius lurked within his soul and 
fitted him for his mighty scheme. He was an orator by 



I08 THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 

nature, of commanding aspect, flowing beard, piercing 
eye, and a countenance that painted every feeling of the 
soul within him. His memory was capacious, his imagi- 
nation unsurpassed since or before, and his power of 
judgment truly marvelous. And yet he was an illiterate 
barbarian ; he could neither read nor write. But if the 
world played him false in this respect. Nature made up for 
it ; for he was a natural philosopher and a religious hero. 
He compared the nations and the religions of the earth, 
and wove for his own people a religious web of imagery 
and sensual pleasure unequaled in the history of fiction. 

God had placed him, he said, in the best of nations — 
the Arabian ; in the best of tribes — the Koreish ; in the 
best of families — the Motalleb ; and God had made himself 
the best of men. He was the first who was to knock at 
the gates of paradise. His grave was the first to be 
opened on the day of judgment. Abraham had asked 
him from God ; Jesus Christ foretold his advent ; and his 
own mother saw visions of light on the night of his birth. 
He rode through the realms of space on the winged steed 
El Borak, the Sparkling, and tied his aerial charger at the 
gates of Jerusalem. He had spoken with the prophets, 
and was introduced to Jesus in Solomon's Temple. He 
had made a passage through the stars into the empyrean 
dome of heaven, where, while the hand of God anointed 
him, he read on the throne in letters of golden light the 
words, There is but one God, and Mohammed is his 
Prophet." 

Death is but a bridge, he said, between time and eter- 
nity. Streams of milk and honey, and richest wines, roll 
their perfumed waves in the paradise promised to the 
poor and savage children of Arabia's desert wastes. And 
then he would carry away their imagination by the rich 
and lively coloring he gave to the sensual enjoyment of 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



109 



the land beyond the skies. It was an abode, he said, 
beautiful with gushing waters, murmuring foliage, rich 
fruits, golden couches decked with brightest jewels, the 
eternal reward of those who follow the one God and Mo- 
hammed his only Prophet. His eloquence had unbounded 
effect on the simple sons of the desert, and, wildly fol- 
lowing him, they spread, within a space of ten years, the 
religion of Mohammed far away beyond the confines of 
Arabia. 

Through the winning tenets and promises of this arch- 
impostor Christianity was well-nigh stifled in the East. 
He was soon at war with Heraclius, the imperial cham- 
pion, who had rescued the cross from the Persians. With 
a powerful army the Mohammedans invaded the territory 
of the Holy Land east of the Jordan, and the battle of 
Muta beheld the Crescent and Cross face to face for the 
first time in history. On came Mohammed with ten thou- 
sand horse and twenty thousand foot; but Providence 
conquered him, for the heat and thirst and pestilential 
winds laid waste his army and he was satisfied with peace. 
He went home and died of poison, leaving behind him a 
hatred of the Christian, and a people about to spread 
themselves and that hatred over many a land. That they 
hated the Christian name may be judged from the fact 
that Giaour^ a dog, was their name for a Christian. 

Ninety years afterward, the Moors on the coast of 
Africa, proud of the Crescent and vain of their strength 
and numbers, looked with a covetous eye across the 
straits to the rock-bound coast of Spain. They saw in 
the distance the graceful Christian towers of Seville and 
the shining fields of Andalusia. Embarking, they landed 
on the unsuspecting shores, spread themselves like locusts 
in hordes through the land, and in a few months were 
masters of the kingdom. The battle of Xeres decided 



no THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 

the fate of the Spaniard ; and though the Arab con- 
querors allowed much religious freedom to the Christians, 
many a noble church was razed to the ground, many a 
precious relic burned as an idol, and many a brave de- 
fender of the Cross died at the point of the Moslem 
sword. The Crescent was in the ascendant. It floated on 
the battlements of Cordova, Seville, and Granada; while 
the Cross, hidden and dishonored, eked out an ignomini- 
ous and servile existence. So it continued for eight long 
centuries, till at length the proud spirit of Spain asserted 
itself, and shook off once and forever the galling thrall- 
dom of the Arab Moor. On the 2d of January, 1492 — a 
year doubly famous and doubly glorious for the Spaniard 
by reason of the discovery of America — Isabella entered 
the capital of the Moorish kingdom to receive the homage 
of the last of its sovereigns. The Moors looked for the 
last time on the fair fields of beautiful Granada, and soon 
the last galley was seen fading from the shore. Thus 
the object was attained for which every Spaniard had 
long sighed. The long-standing ignominy of his ances- 
tors and their religion was effaced, and the names of Fer- 
dinand and Isabella became pillars in the temple of his- 
toric fame. All Europe shared in the joy of Spain, and 
secular princes vied with the Holy See in celebrating an 
event of such joy to the children of the Church. 

But all Europe was overrun by the hostile followers of 
the Crescent. Twice they laid siege to Constantinople, 
and were driven ignominiously from its walls. They never 
knew when they were vanquished. Whole countries in 
their way lay houseless and desolate, victims of famine, 
fire, and sword. The bodies of Christian thousands 
floated down the rivers to the Mediterranean, and so 
great was the carnage in one battle (that under Eudes), 
according to the confession of the survivors, that God 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. m 

alone could reckon the number of the slain. The Cres- 
cent of the victorious Saracen waved over the walls of 
the noblest cities in France, and the memory of their dis- 
asters is still preserved in tradition by the French peasant 
and chronicled in Italian song. But the intrepid Charles 
Martel met them on the field of Tours, and, battling in 
the cause of the Cross, the Franks trailed the Crescent in 
the blood of two hundred thousand Saracens. 

And now the sacred metropolis of Christendom, the 
seven-hilled city of the Popes, was attacked. A fleet of 
Saracens from the African coast cast anchor at Ostia, 
invested the holy city, and tore down the cross and orna- 
ments of Christian art from the consecrated altars of her 
noble churches. Altars of shining marble, crowned with 
golden tabernacles, were torn to pieces ; relics of saints 
were trampled under the hoofs of Saracen war-horses ; 
statues, shattered into atoms, strewed the Appian Way ; 
and if aught were spared, it was to be attributed to the 
haste rather than the scruples of the savage invaders. 

Soon after a united fleet of Moors and Arabs cast 
anchor at the mouth of the Tiber and threatened the total 
destruction of the city. But Leo IV, the new Pontiff, was 
young, and the spirit of the ancient Roman burned in his 
breast. Bravely he set to work and raised a gallant corps, 
who marched to the sea, fought, and beheld the winds of 
heaven scatter the infidel on the waves and dash them to 
pieces on the rocks of a hostile shore. Thus Rome was 
saved. 

We now come to an epoch the most thrilling in the 
history of religious warfare — an epoch which beheld all 
Europe rise as one man to stem the torrent of Saracen 
cruelty and insolence, and to battle for the places con- 
secrated by the life and death of Jesus Christ — viz., the 
Crusades. 



112 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



Numerous and forcible were the motives which com- 
pelled the nations of Europe to engage in these expedi- 
tions. Public indignation had been aroused throughout 
Europe by the daily recital of the cruelties practiced by 
the Saracens on those who through motives of faith went 
to visit the holy places now desecrated by the enormities 
of the barbarous tyrants who held them. Thousands per- 
ished on the way, victims of ill treatment, or died outside 
the walls of the holy city, being denied entrance, as they 
had no gold, being poor, or having been plundered on the 
way. In the city of Jerusalem, where pilgrims expected 
an asylum, they were treated inhumanly. Some were yoked 
to cars and plows, others put to death without cause. 

Among the pilgrims was one who was destined to 
change the face of things. Under the garb of a poor 
monk he possessed an elevated soul and a mind of noble 
resolve. His name was Peter, and he was surnamed "The 
Hermit." Returning to Europe, he sought the Pope, 
Urban II, and communicated to the soul of the Pontiff 
part of the indignant fire burning in his own. And when 
this monk spoke to the assembled thousands on the hill- 
sides of southern France, his soul was on fire and his 
words were darts from the flame. " I have seen," said he, 
all the enthusiasm of his nature painted in his face — "I 
have seen Christians heavily ironed, dragged into slavery, 
and put to the yoke like beasts of burden. I have seen 
the oppressors of Jerusalem torturing poverty to wring a 
tribute from it. I have seen the ministers of the Most 
High dragged from the sanctuary, beaten with rods, and 
doomed to an ignominious death." 

Then spoke the Pope with the ardor of a Christian and 
the eloquence of one inspired. " God wills it ! God wills 
it!" rang out from the excited multitude, and the cry was 
taken up from Sicily to Great Britain, and from the Pyre- 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 113 

nees to the Baltic. Raymond of Toulouse, Robert of 
Normandy, Stephen of Blois, Robert of Flanders, Godfrey 
de Bouillon, with his two brave brothers, Bohemond of 
Tarentum, and the noble Tancred, enrolled themselves 
under the standard at the head of eight hundred thousand 
warriors. The venerable Bishop of Puy, pious author of 
the Salve Regina, accompanied them as chief spiritual 
guide and papal legate. 

Soon six hundred thousand crusaders were marshaled 
under the walls of Constantinople. They were encamped 
in a beautiful valley on the right bank of the Bosporus, 
the flower of Europe's chivalry.* They passed on and 
took by storm several important towns, which the)^ gave 
back to their lawful owners. They left twenty thousand 
infidels lifeless on the field of Dorylaeum. All the East 
lay defenseless before them, and Baldwin, Count of Flan- 
ders, is King of Edessa. 

At length they are under the walls of Jerusalem. Their 
ranks have been thinned by treachery, heat, desertion, ex- 
haustion, thirst ; but now is the day to avenge the myriad 
wrongs of the Moslem. The treasured wrongs of four long 
centuries are in their hearts as they swear to enter the holy 



* The historians of that day tell us that in the cities and towns of 
Europe only old men, women, and children could be found. The men 
had gone to the holy wars. This state of things recalls the time of 
the old Roman wars. The men were all under arms. How strongly 
Macaulay has it : 

" The harvests of Arctium 

This year old men must reap ; 
This year young boys in Umbro 

Shall plunge the struggling sheep, 
And in the vats of Luna 

The seething must shall foam 
Round the white feet of laughing girls 

Whose sires have marched to Rome." 



114 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



city. And though thirst and fatigue did much to reduce 
their numbers and their ardor, so that they exclaimed, 
" O Jerusalem, receive our last sigh, arid let thy walls fall 
upon us and thy sacred dust cover our bones ! " yet, ani- 
mated by the memories of the ground they trod, they 
rallied, fought, and at length triumphed. Two days of 
vigorous but fruitless assault passed away and they were 
repulsed. Fired with a new spirit, at the ominous hour of 
three in the afternoon they renewed the attack. Godfrey 
lowered his great movable bridge upon the walls, and 
from it poured his burning darts upon the enemy and into 
the bales of straw and cotton which protected the inner 
walls. The wind fanned the flames and drove them upon 
the infidels, who, stifled, yielded and fell by the Christian 
swords. The gates yield to the vigorous battle-axes of 
the knights, and all is carnage. The holy city is rescued, 
and resounds with the cry, " God wills it ! Godfrey is the 
uncrowned King of Jerusalem — uncrowned, for he would 
not wear a diadem where Jesus wore a wreath of thorns. 

" Forth from the holy city to the sky 

Went pealing up a glad, victorious shout, 
When from the jasper battlements on high 

Fair morn had flung her banner out — 
As spirits of the darkness fleeing fast — 

Before the high battalions of the sun, 
Before the cross of Christ had fled at last 

The pagan hordes. Jerusalem was won ! 

" 'Mid his triumphant band Duke Godfrey stood, 

And grateful praises trembled on his lips 
To see the Moslem crescent, stained with blood. 

Grow pale and vanish in a bright eclipse. 
For while the early dawn was gleaming still, 

Like tears of joy on Mount Moriah's crest, 
Some Christian knight had climbed that holy hill 

And planted there the standard of the blest. 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



Above the shattered walls and o'er the tomb 

By which of late the mocking Moslem trod, 
The banner of the Cross was seen to loom 

Triumphant there — the panoply of God. 
And the fair garden of Gethsemane, 

Where blossoms tesselate the tufted moss, 
Scene of Christ's agony, now seemed to be 

Illumined by the shadow of His cross. 

" There, 'mid the olives' stately colonnades, 

A graceful temple morning seemed to build, 
With shining dome and steeple of green shade. 

Whose emerald frieze her dainly hand did gild. 
And as with reverent awe devoutly he 

Who led the brave Crusaders wandered there, 
The gentle Nazarene he seemed to see. 

And hear the echo of His mournful prayer. 

And to the conqueror of Jerusalem, 

Who grieved to see her fair streets stained with gore 
When the rich offer of a diadem 

With one consent his grateful soldiers bore — 
Brave Godfrey pointed where soft clouds were rolled 

'Round Calvary, and said : * My soul yet mourns 
Christ's death, and shall I wear a crown of gold 

Where he so meekly bore a coronal of thorns ? 

" * Shall I in wild, barbaric splendor reign. 

And rest at night upon a kingly bed, 
Where Jesus ofttimes, worn by grief and pain, 

Found not a spot to rest his weary head ? 
A jeweled scepter shall I proudly dare 

With idle pomp in insolence to lay, 
Where the rough cross my Saviour sadly bare. 

And drooped beneath, fainting by the way ? 

** * Shall serfs and vassals my proud will abide. 
Where Jesus, when a blasphemous, vile crew 
Fiercely reviled him, to his Father cried, 

" Forgive them, for they know not what they do ? ** 



ii6 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



Shall slaves for me the richest viands dress, 

Here shall my board with useless splendor blaze, 

From whence He wandered to the wilderness. 
And fasted there for forty days ? 

" * I'd rather seek, 'neath Sodom's inky flood, 

A throne within the cities of the plain, 
Than wade through heaps of slain and pools of blood 

Here in Christ's ransomed sepulchre to reign. 
No, let me rather those red stains remove. 

Where Jordan's holy waters swiftly glide, 
And where the shadow of a silvery dome 

Seems hovering still to consecrate the tide. 

" * A pilgrim to the sepulchre, 'tis meet 

That I should serve my Lord as humbly there 
As she who washed with tears His blessed feet. 

And wiped them gently with her shining hair. 
I've knelt beside the tomb, which, pale and cold, 

With Christ's fair image memory still adorns, 
And I will never wear a crown of gold 

Where He died bleeding with a crown of thorns ! ' " 

Thus was Palestine rescued from the hands of the 
Saracens. Not effectually, however; for two centuries of 
fierce warfare followed. New enemies of the Christian 
name every year sprang up to encounter the noblest 
knights of Europe, and the Holy Land was the theater of 
the bloodiest struggles of the middle ages between the 
Crescent and the Cross. The noblest children of Chris- 
tendom — Conrad, Philip Augustus, Frederick of Germany, 
Richard Coeur de Lion, Baldwin of Flanders, John of 
Brienne, and St. Louis — yielded the glory of their life and 
their name in the great cause. But the vigor and enthusi- 
asm that marked the first crusades were wanting in the 
later expeditions; and famine, thirst, home wars, and the 
treachery of Eastern guides crushed for a long time the 
martial spirit of Christian Europe. 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



117 



It seems to have been decreed, however, that the 
Crescent should at length yield to the prowess of the 
Cross, and to Catholic Poland belongs the glory of the 
triumph. In the achievement of that triumph she saved 
Austria from national annihilation and all Europe from 
disgrace. For on that day Poland stemmed the tide of 
Turkish invasion, unfurled the banner of the Cross under 
John Sobieski, and trailed the proud Crescent in the blood 
of twenty thousand Mohammedans. 

It happened in this way : The chief of the Turkish 
divan had given offense to the court of Vienna. When 
remonstrated with, he answered by ravaging with fire and 
sword the Austrian possessions in Hungary, and he re- 
newed the oath of his predecessors, " to feed his horse 
with oats on the altar of St. Peter at Rome." Three hun- 
dred thousand Turks assembled at Belgrade, and the Otto- 
man council determined to lay siege to Vienna. Aus- 
tria," said Mustapha, the grand vizier, "Austria is a tree 
of which Vienna is the trunk ; cut down the trunk, and the 
branches fall of themselves." 

And so that immense host marched on toward Vienna. 
The emperor fled the city. Resistance seemed useless; 
consternation took hold of the populace. The Turks be- 
gan the siege. The people fought desperately. But Turk- 
ish fire was doing its work on their public buildings, 
churches, and convents. Vienna was on the verge of de- 
struction, and all Europe on the eve of being overrun by 
the haters of Christianity, when John Sobieski, King of 
Poland, twice saviour of his own country, at the solicitation 
of Pope Innocent XI, came to the rescue and became the 
saviour of Europe. By forced marches at the head of his 
Polish warriors he arrived on the hill outside Vienna, and 
by rockets ascending from the heights of Cayenberg an- 
nounced to the besieged citizens that their deliverer was 



Il8 THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



at hand. His soldiers were poorly clad ; but Sobieski said 
they had " sworn to clothe themselves in the spoils of the 
enemy.*' 

At daybreak on the morning of the battle Sobieski re- 
tired into a little chapel on the mountain side. The papal 
muncio celebrated mass. Sobieski himself served mass, 
and with arms extended in the form of a cross prayed the 
God of battles to shield his servants that day and van- 
quish the enemies of his Cross. He mounted his horse, 
took his son, a boy of sixteen, by his side, drew out his 
men, arranged his officers, and gave the signal for battle. 
Fire was his weapon, and from every point of his army 
heavy discharges dealt death and destruction on the heads 
of the besieging Turks. The disastrous charge lasted in- 
cessantly during three hours. Then the watchful eye of 
Sobieski caught sight of a long file of camels slowly mov- 
ing away. The Turks were retreating. Sobieski charged 
them, and, at nightfall, of all the immense host that came 
to besiege Vienna but twenty thousand Moslem corpses 
were left to guard its walls. 

Sobieski's first act was to send word to the Holy Father 
in Rome. Lending Christian modesty to Caesar's famous 
message he wrote, " Veni, vidi, Deus vicit " — I came, I 
saw, God conquered. Next day, riding at the head of his 
victorious army, he entered Vienna, and Caesar or Pompey 
in the palmiest days of their victory never received from 
the Roman populace so enthusiastic a welcome. The peo- 
ple knelt as he passed; tears of joy were their only lan- 
guage. Mothers held up their children that they might 
see the hero as he passed and relate to future generations 
the jubilant glory of that great day. 

Sobieski and his retinue entered the Augustinian church, 
knelt down, and himself intoned the Te Deum. And as 
the solemn chant was drawing to a close, a priest entered 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



the pulpit and took for his text, Fuit ho7no Missus a 
Deo ctci nomen erat Joannes^ And every eye turned on 
John Sobieski. 

Such is the history of the deliverance of Vienna, one 
of the grandest episodes of modern warfare, an event by 
which Poland became the deliverer of Europe and Poland's 
child the hero of Christendom. 

But, alas, for poor Poland ! Her after-history is a brief 
one. She fell. Yes, after a series of struggles the bravest 
recorded in history, she fell, pitied by the world, and lost 
her place among the nations. Alas, that might should 
conquer right ! Listen to the poet as he tells the thrilling 
story of her downfall : 

" Warsaw's last champion from her heights surveyed, 
Wide o'er the fields, a waste of ruin laid. 

* O Heaven,' he cried, * my bleeding country save ! 
Is there no hand on high to shield the brave ? 
Yet, though destruction sweep those lovely plains, 
Rise, fellow-men : our Country yet remains. 

By that dread name we wave the sword on high, 
And swear by her to live, with her to die ! * 

** He said, and on the rampart heights arrayed 
His trusty warriors, few but undismayed ; 
Firm-paced and slow a horrid front they form. 
Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm ; 
Low, murmuring sounds along their banners fly, 

* Revenge, or death ! ' the watchword and reply. 
Then pealed the notes omnipotent to charm, 
And the loud tocsin tolled their last alarm. 

" In vain, alas ! in vain, ye gallant few. 
From rank to rank your volleyed thunder flew. 
Oh ! bloodiest picture in the book of time : 
Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime. 
Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe, 
Strength in her arm, nor mercy in her woe ; 



I20 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear, 
Closed her bright eye, and curbed her high career. 
Hope for a season bade the world farewell, 
And Freedom shrieked as Kosciusko fell. 

*' Departed spirits of the mighty dead, 
Ye that at Marathon and Leuctra bled. 
Friends of the world, restore your swords to man, 
Fight in the sacred cause and lead the van ; 
Yet for Sarmatia's tears of blood atone, 
And make her arm puissant as your own. 
Oh ! once again to Freedom's cause return 
The patriot Tell, the Bruce of Bannockburn." 

Such have been the overt, national struggles between 
the Cross and the Crescent. But the sword and the can- 
non are no longer employed against the Church. The 
Cross and the Crescent are no longer in open warfare. 
The insidious pen, however, takes the place of the sword; 
and the voice of the dissenter and the infidel, if not as 
loud as the cannon's roar, is still armed with keen pre- 
cision against the Christian Church. But let the pen 
flourish and the voice resound, yet the grand old Church 
will still stand secure, unchanging, unchanged forever. 

Turn we, in conclusion, to the cross we»love. In pre- 
Christian times it was a thing of basest associations, hated 
by the Jews and despised by the Romans. It was the 
common scaffold on which the most lawless criminals 
ended their wretched existence, and it was disgrace to the 
descendants of those who died by it. To the Romans, 
death by the sword, famine, or the beasts of the amphi- 
theater was honorable, compared with crucifixion. In- 
deed, no Roman subject was ever crucified. 

But there came a time when One died on that cross 
who changed its ignominy into honor, its reproach into 
glory. In the afternoon of that tremendous day mourn- 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



121 



ing Nature, speaking in the voice of Nature's God, gave 
signs to men that a Man-God had just died; for the 
sun refused his light, earth shuddered, and from out the 
sepulchres of Jerusalem walked the buried dead. Con- 
summatum est!'' rang out upon the silent air of Calvary, 
and all was calm again. The cross stood out against the 
sky. Ah, what a cross it is now ! There it stands, glori- 
fied, with the name of Jesus of Nazareth stamped upon it. 
There it stands for the honor of men and the pride of 
myriad angels. A new epoch has just dawned for its his- 
tory. It sets out an ensign of glory and prowess, and its 
credentials are from heaven in the words of the expiring 
Jesus, " Co7tsummatum est I " And when the Church began 
her powerful and amiable mission that cross was her 
strength and her hope ; it was her solace in persecution 
and when persecution ended, and high over the ruins of 
Rome's darling altars rose the cross of the crucified Naza- 
rene. It was the light of the gloomy Catacombs, and it 
beamed brilliantly high in the heavens before the enrap- 
tured eyes of Constantine and his troops. It was the 
inspiration of the Crusades. ^' In cruce salus " was the 
motto of the early kings and warriors; for, though one 
bore a lion, and another an eagle, and a third a dragon, 
into the field of battle, all gloried in one ensign, all ac- 
knowledged one standard, widespread and prized in empire 
and island and ocean, and that standard was the cross of 
Jesus Christ. It was the pioneer of the missionary as he 
set foot on pagan soil. It was borne on before Patrick 
to the court of Milcho. It preceded Augustin as he 
landed on the shores of England. It came with Colum- 
bus to these willing shores. It is found to-day in the 
midst of the Western prairies, marking the place once 
traversed by those who toiled far away under its protec- 
tion, and who cherished the memories it brought to their 
9 



122 



THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT. 



hearts of faith. It surmounts the lowly graves or the 
rich monuments of our Catholic forefathers. It is found 
in every Christian household. It adorns the breast of the 
princess, glitters on the coronet of the duke, crowns the 
throne of the king. 

Oh, the cross, the cross ! It has always been a thing 
of endearment to us. We played with it in childhood as 
it dangled from our mother's rosary. We loved it in boy- 
hood, and marveled at its wondrous story. We revere it 
in manhood, and meditate upon its power. It is the last 
thing we wish to look upon in the evening of life. We 
would imprint with our dying lips a kiss on the image of 
our dying Redeemer, and we hope that it will mark our 
last resting-place in death. So, God forbid that we should 
ever cease to glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ ! 

Oh, may we ever love the cross ! May the truth it 
unfolds and the light it sheds around it be the guide and 
glory of this great people ! May the one true Church of 
God, which alone is grand and mighty enough for mighty 
and grand Columbia, be the Church of her future, as she 
stands in the vanguard of nations, cross in hand, and 
proudly pointing heavenward ! 



A TRANSATLANTIC HOLIDAY: 



IN IRELAND THROUGH EUROPE AT ROME. 

/. IN IRELAND, 
Delivered at the Church of the Sacred Heart, Brooklyn, 

I PROPOSE speaking to you this evening, my friends, on 
Ireland and Rome. Or, rather, I would invite you on a 
tour to Ireland, and through the Continent, to the Eternal 
City. Our subject being necessarily descriptive, we shall 
aim at being interesting rather than eloquent; and you 
will bear in mind throughout that, though delivered in a 
church, our theme is a secular one. 

You need not dread this journey very much. We shall 
travel by the winged coach of imagination. It is the most 
convenient conveyance we can take just now ; the safest, 
swiftest, and certainly the cheapest. There will be no 
dust on the road to dim our eyes, no noise to prevent our 
hearing, no officials to order us around. Your fare is 
already paid, your tickets collected, and all is ready for 
the trip. We have left the ocean behind us. Our start- 
ing point is a place called Killarney ; our train, an ex- 
press one, calling only at the more noted places; and our 
journey's end is Rome. 

And as Killarney happens to be in Ireland, we shall 
imagine ourselves in the Green Isle for a short time this 
evening. We shall first glance at the town, then at the 
lakes. 

The town of Killarney has not very much to boast of. 

(123) 



124 



A HOLIDAY. 



Though possessing nearly six thousand inhabitants, it has 
very little business, is anything but clean, and commands 
no view of the lakes. The Catholic cathedral is a mag- 
nificent edifice, and the Franciscan church and monastery 
are a credit to the zeal of the people. The chief products 
of the country around, as far as I could see, were splendid 
specimens of arbutus wood and — guides. Oh, no one ever 
saw such a place for guides ! Every one you meet, from 
the mere lad to the tottering old man, seems to have a 
strong natural instinct to become a guide — to become your 
guide ; to climb barefoot with you up the crags of Manger- 
ton, around the " Devil's Punch-Bowl," up to the Eagle's 
Nest, and away into the recesses of the Gap of Dunloe. 
It is sad to see those people, and to feel that so many of 
them must be unemployed. You can not stand five min- 
utes on the street without being surrounded by a body- 
guard of these guides," each vociferously proclaiming 
his own pre-eminence in the craft and lustily running 
down his neighbors. Don't take him, your reverence ! 
he was born on the County Cork side of the mountain 
and came to see the lakes himself." " I'm the guide that 
took Lord Bolton ! " urges another. I'm the boy that's 
mentioned in your guide-book ! " exclaims a third ; and 
so on. 

Accompanied by one whose eye betrayed humor and 
whose address gave indications of intelligence, we set out 
for the lakes. There are three, as you know — the Lower, 
the Middle, and the Upper Lake. The Lower Lake is the 
nearest to the town, about a mile and a half distant. It 
is the largest of the three, being about five miles long by 
three and a half wide. Over its broad surface the hand 
of Nature has scattered thirty islands of rarest beauty, 
loveliest foliage, and fairylike nooks and streams. Oh, 
these islands are enchanting spots indeed ! Innisfallen is 



A HOLIDAY. 



125 



the fairest child of that lake. In the center of its twenty- 
five acres is an abbey in ruins, and around it is every 
variety of miniature forest and lawn and glade. Its 
shores are charmingly indented ; its birds sing melodi- 
ously, and the very arbutus seem to whisper the music of 
other days. Standing on this charming islet, within the 
shadow of that old abbey where saints were wont to pray, 
one feels lost in rapturous thought; and, leaving it, is in- 
clined to sing with Moore : 

" Sweet Innisfallen ! fare thee well ! 

May calm and sunshine long be thine ; 
How fair thou art let others tell, 
While but to feel how fair be mine. 

" Sweet Innisfallen, long shall dwell 

In memory's dream that sunny smile 
Which o'er thee on that evening fell 
When first I saw thy fairy isle." 

The shores of this Lower Lake are strewn with beauties 
of every kind — hill and dale, lawn and woodland, castle 
and abbey. Muckross Abbey is the most perfect little 
gem of a ruin in all Ireland. There it stands, almost as 
the monks left it; there, with its mullioned windows and 
graceful archways; its tower, its sanctuary, its cells; and 
the mournful winds sweep through them, murmuring the 
sad story of centuries. The ruin is not on an island, as 
some seem to suppose ; it is on the shore of the Lower 
Lake, within the domain of a certain Mr. Herbert, who de- 
mands a shilling from each visitor, and thus raises quite a 
handsome income on the fame and works of Irish monks. 
There is not, I believe, a drop of Irish blood in the veins 
of this Mr. Herbert. He even went to England for a 
wife. And the O'Donoghues and McCarthys, whose fathers 
— now at rest in Muckross graveyard — built the abbey 



126 



A HOLIDAY. 



and owned the country all around, are now begging bread, 
or eking a miserable livelihood at the hands of this alien 
landlord. Alas, that might should conquer right ! *' 

But let us pass on to the Middle Lake, and listen, as we 
go, to the strange legends our guide is telling. He tells 
of the great O'Donoghue, who leaped out of that castle 
window into the lake, and there holds his court in splen- 
dor to the present day, showing himself to mortals only 
once a year — every May morning," of course. Don't 
laugh at the guide. If you do, he will suspect that you 
doubt the truth of his stories, and then you may be re- 
sponsible for a fine Irish curse, which he will inflict, not 
on you but on himself, " if every word isn't as true as 
gospel, your reverence.'* Let him proceed as he tells you 
about the " sarpint " that is locked up in a box in that 
lake, consigned there by St. Patrick himself. Don't smile 
when he tells you that he himself, with his own two eyes, 
saw " fairies hurling on the lake beyant." He has any 
number of these stories, and seems to believe them. He 
tells them with relish and earnestness. Indeed, you meet 
very fairly informed people who credit much of this kind 
of thing. One insisted that he saw a funeral on the lake, 
one summer morning at four, going over to Innisfallen 
churchyard. The truth is, that in the twilight of the 
morning, when the mists are rising from the lakes and 
rivers, optical illusions are quite common. Who has not 
heard of the Fata Morgana, the Phantom Ship, and the 
thousand deceptions of the mirage ? Portions of cloudy 
atmosphere form themselves into every shape, either be- 
cause of the thinness of the air around them, or because 
of the refractions of the sun's rays, or both, and move 
away slowly but lifelike from the coming sun. The trees 
and many-shaped slopes of land assist in the delusion. 
Add to this the lively imagery of the most imaginative of 



A HOLIDAY. 



127 



peoples, and much of the marvelous in Irish legendary 
history will be accounted for. 

But we travel slowly. The Middle Lake is little more 
than a lovely river, joining the Upper and Lower Lakes; 
but its shores are so picturesque and its islets so green, 
and the hillsides around it so varied in light and shade 
and luxuriance, that one would fain dwell there forever. 

Just row your boat under the Eagle's Nest Mountain, 
and listen to the bugle of your guide. There is no such 
echo in any other part of the world. A single note is 
sounded. There is silence for an instant; then you 
hear the sound from the top of yon distant hill; then 
here on the side of this; now it comes faint from that- 
side, now loud and shrill from this; then dies away in 
many tones among the distant mountains. But sound 
three or four notes ! Mortal ear has never heard such 
harmony. It is simply ravishing. A multitude of sounds, 
as if from myriad hills, is heard at once; sometimes paus- 
ing, as if to wait for a tardy voice to join in the chorus, 
sometimes coming in quickest succession, but always with 
bewildering grandeur. 

Fire off a cannon ! The hills are instinct with angry 
life. A thousand peals of deafening thunder force you to 
hold your ears. It would seem as though the mountain 
gods were groaning in anger at the mortals who dared 
disturb their slumbering solitude. 

We are now on the hill over the Upper Lake, the wild- 
est and darkest — lonely and weird. It differs Very much 
from its two sisters. They are peaceful, calm, and sur- 
rounded by pastoral scenes and emerald loveliness. But 
the Upper Lake is a dark basin of water, reflecting the 
color of the brown, bare hills overhead. Its borders are 
rocks and moss-covered stones, and scarce a tree is there. 
Maidens are at every turn of the mountain road, supplied 



128 



A HOLIDAY. 



with "goat's milk*' — from the cow — and potteen^ or "moun- 
tain dew," which came from some Killarney whisky shop. 
Don't drink it. Kate Kearney's house is not far away ; 
but Kate herself has long since been gathered to her 
fathers. 

Ascend one of the hills here ; look down over the three 
lakes, and you may challenge the world to produce a more 
charming scene of land and lake, rock and mountain and 
cascade. It is a perfect paradise. The waters, in a 
thousand roaring cataracts, are rushing down to feed the 
lakes; and the lakes in turn pour themselves into the 
river Laune to mingle their foaming waters with the blue 
of the great Atlantic. 

We follow the Kenmare road over the mountains and 
away through scenes rivaling Killarney in grandeur. 
Glengariff and Gougawne Barra are before us; and noth- 
ing could be more charming, more varied, more positively 
enchanting than the panoramic view around us. At our 
feet is the somber lake of Gougawne Barra, and in its 
midst the little spot of which the poet sang : 

" Oh, where is the dwelling, in valley or highland, 
So meet for a bard as this lone little island? " 

And when we have feasted our eyes on all this natural 
loveliness, we might stroll down to the seashore and listen 
to the legends of the fishermen. One, more than the rest, 
will please. It is a very popular one among the fishing 
hamlets along the coast of the County of Cork. It tells 
that our Blessed Lady once came to pray on the seashore, 
and knelt down on a little green hillock near the strand. 
Sailing by, near the coast, was a ship whose crew and cap- 
tain laughed and jeered at the kneeling Virgin. Suddenly 
a storm arose, and all were destroyed. The poet tells it 
in the following beautiful language: 



A HOLIDAY. 



129 



" The evening star rose beauteous above the fading day, 
As to the lone and silent beach the Virgin came to pray, 
And hill and wave shone brightly in the moonlight's mellow fall. 
But the bank of green where Mary knelt was brightest of them alL 

* Slow moving o'er the waters, a gallant bark appeared. 

And her joyous crew looked from the deck as to the land she neared ; 
To the calm and sheltered haven she floated like a swan. 
And her wings of snow, o'er the waves below, in pride and beauty 
shone. 

' The master saw our Lady, as he stood upon the prow, 
And marked the whiteness of her robe, the radiance of her brow ; 
Her arms were folded gracefully upon her stainless breast. 
And her eyes looked up among the stars, to Him her soul loved best. 

* He showed her to his sailors, and he hailed her with a cheer, 
And on the kneeling Virgin they gazed with laugh and jeer, 
And madly swore a form so fair they never saw before ; 

And they cursed the faint and lagging breeze that kept them from the 
shore. 

' The ocean from its bosom shook off the moonlight sheen, 
And up its wrathful billows rose, to vindicate their Queen, 
And a cloud came o'er the heavens, and a darkness o'er the land. 
And the scoffing crew beheld no more that Lady on the strand. 

' Out burst the pealing thunder, and the lightning leaped about ; 
And rushing with his watery war, the tempest gave a shout ; 
And that vessel from a mountain wave came down with thund'ring 
shock. 

And her timbers flew, like scattered spray, on Inchidony's rock. 

Then loud from all that guilty crew one shriek rose wild and high, 
But the angry surge swept o'er them, and hushed their gurgling cry ; 
And with a hoarse, exulting tone the tempest passed away. 
And down, still chafing from their strife, th' indignant waters lay. 

When the calm and purple morning shone out on high Dunmore, 
Full many a mangled corpse was seen on Inchidony's shore ; 
And to this day the fisherman shows where the scofl'ers sank. 
And still he calls that hillock green * The Virgin Mary's bank.' " 



I30 



A HOLIDAY. 



We are leaving Ireland. Her emerald shores are fad- 
ing from our view. Waft us where they will, the winds of 
heaven can not bear us to a lovelier coast, a more hospi- 
table land. You will travel in vain to find a fairer spot 
than Killarney, grander rivers than the Shannon, the 
Blackwater, the Bann — Pastoral Bann '* — the Boyne 
around Slane Castle. No land on earth can exhibit a 
greater natural wonder than the Giant's Causeway, bolder 
hills than Wicklow, lovelier vales than Avoca. Yet it is 
not these wonders and beauties that make us love Ireland 
so much and so tenderly. It is not the green hillsides 
crowned with the oak and the sycamore, the holly and the 
ivy, that excite the tender emotions we feel when we look 
for the last time on the fading form of this dear old 
land. No. 

" It is not that Nature has shed o'er the scene 
Her purest of crystal, her brightest of green ; 
'Tis not the soft magic of streamlet or hill — 
Oh, no ! It is something more exquisite still." 

No : 'tis the friends and the memories of long ago — 
friends never more to be met on earth, memories of days 
never to return — that hallow the dear little land. It is 
the memory of youth's bright days ; of the wise, strong 
father and the gentle mother, both now no more ; of the 
kind, venerable priest whom we ran to meet, whose smile 
we sought as we bowed our youthful head for his blessing 
and then ran home in joy to tell our mother. It is such 
memories that make us love the little land, shedding bitter 
tears as we look upon her for the last time. Yes; and 
then we go back to the years of trial and suffering and 
blood. We look in spirit on the old ivy-clad ruin, and we 
listen to the story — the sad, sad story — it tells. We go in 
spirit to the old churchyards, and the graves of martyrs 



A HOLIDAY. 



tell us of the days of tyranny. We think of these things, 
and we love Ireland all the more. But we bow down our 
heads in sadness, and regret that might should still be 
right; as we ask our all-wise God, How long, O Lord; 
how long ? " 



A TRANSATLANTIC HOLIDAY. 



//. THROUGH EUROPE, 
Delivered at the Church of the Sacred Hea^i, Brooklyn, 

We are in France — La Belle France — flying through 
the fields of Normandy, and descending from our aerial 
coach at Rouen only to see the spot where Joan d'Arc 
was burned at the stake. She had done her duty. With 
superhuman bravery she fought and delivered France, 
was arrested, and condemned as a sorceress. It is only 
now that France is awaking to the glory of her life. 

Paris claims a suitable delay at our hands. It is the 
same bright, gay, beautiful city that the Bourbons and 
the Napoleons have made it; and, to all intents and 
purposes, Paris is still France. It is no longer unrivaled, 
however, we think, for physical beauty or for the grand- 
eur of its public buildings. It has a very fair rival in the 
up-town portion of New York, and some of the down-town 
business buildings of Gotham are not surpassed by any 
on the Champs-Elysees. 

And as Paris is France, let us rest and devote a few 
moments' thought to that once glorious land — eldest child 
of the Church. 

How cruelly the upheavals, social and religious, of the 
last two centuries have toyed with her! To-day she is 
committing political suicide, spurning the aid and ad- 
vice of her most loving children, who revere and teach 
obedience to her laws, who fought her fights, and who 

(132) 



A HOLIDAY. 



raised her educational institutions to a degree of eminence 
which rendered competition hopeless. And this while she 
welcomes to her embrace those who fled from her in her 
hours of darkness, who scoffed at her laws, defied her au- 
thority, sought to plunder and burn her lovely Paris, and 
who to-day in the streets of that same Paris rend the air 
with shouts against religion, laws, and God ! O Liberty, 
what crimes are tolerated, as well as committed, in thy 
name ! Beautiful France, most Christian daughter of the 
Church, terrible may be the punishments in store for 
thee yet ! 

The state of religion in France, as in many other lands 
to-day, is simply this : The leaders are infidel, commu- 
nistic, bound by unlawful oaths ; while the great masses of 
the people, who are not communistic, are just as law-abid- 
ing as they ever were. But the wicked element in every 
land and age is always the most daring and self-asserting. 
The God-fearing, law-abiding, even though the more nu- 
merous party, are always retiring and peaceful, and leave 
the power and the management to the daring, to the in- 
fidel reds whom they fear. But, O for the sword of the 
late Maurice Patrick MacMahon ! He once again in 
power, and France would be rid of the demons who now 
clutch at her throat. 

We have left Paris en route for Lourdes. We pass by 
Orleans, of which the late scholarly and intrepid Dupan- 
loup, was bishop ; and where Joan, " the Maid of Orleans," 
as she was called, achieved her first renown. After passing 
by Tours, Angouleme, and Bordeaux, we arrive at a place 
called Bayonne. In this city, and after its name, the 
weapon called bayonet became known to us. A Basque 
regiment, in an engagement with neighboring Spaniards, 
running short of ammunition, fixed their knives in the 
muzzles of their guns and charged. 



134 



A HOLIDAY. 



We are now at Lourdes, a place of which we spoke to 
you in a preceding lecture. Apart from its wondrous his- 
tory, and viewed merely physically, Lourdes is really a 
remarkable place. It rests quietly, with its five thousand 
inhabitants, at the foot of rugged hills, and looks into three 
green valleys. The river Gave winds rapidly around the 
base of the hills and up to the very mouth of the grotto. 
The snow-capped Pyrenees cast their dark shadows into 
the valleys and keep guard over the favored little spot. 
It is just the place, one would think, that Heaven would 
choose for a manifestation. What a wonderful, soul-m- 
spiring spot that grotto is ! And the fountain ! Thirty 
years ago there was not even the semblance of a stream- 
let ; and since then how many miracles ! — public, clearly 
proved, admitted. 

Marseilles is our next station, and we go up to see the 
shrine of Notre Dame de la Garde, on the hill overlooking 
the city. This is the church of the sailors. Few seamen 
on the wide Mediterranean but have some time in their 
lives made a vow to visit Notre Dame de la Garde, to thank 
our Lady, ^^Star of the Sea." Here they bring their votive 
offerings; the walls are lined with them. From the doors 
and porticoes you look out on the Mediterranean, There 
it stretches out before you in a blue which you had never 
seen before except in dreams. It is the reflection of the 
cloudless canopy above it, and as you dash along the coast 
toward Genoa by Cannes and Nice, Monaco, Monte Carlo, 
and Villafranche, you have that same lovely sea caressing 
the wheels of the cars, and on the other side, at your left, 
the long feet of the Piedmontese hills, with their trees of 
orange, date, and olive. Everywhere as you pass along 
start up places of interest. Here, at Antibes, Napoleon 
landed in his escape from Elba; there is the island — the 
famed lie Marguerite of " the Man-with-the-Iron-Mask " 



A HOLIDAY. 



— from which Bazaine escaped. Here are the cozy nooks 
whose mild atmosphere invites the consumptives of north- 
ern climes. Onward, between the blue of the water and 
the green of the hillsides, until you reach Genoa — " the 
Superb " — basking in the southern sunshine. Its crescent- 
shaped harbor is filled with craft from every land, of every 
shape and color and grotesque rigging. Its domes and 
towers are as fresh and white, its palaces as proud as ever, 
though not so rich or so well peopled. Here a great man 
breathed his last. He was on his way to Rome, and his 
name was Daniel O'Connell. His heart was sent to the 
Eternal City, his body to his native land ; his soul, we 
trust, is with God. 

Pisa, the next station on our way, is a lazy city, pic- 
turesque and well laid out, and still dislikes Florence as 
Venice hates Genoa. (A harmless rivalry. Think of Chi- 
cago and St. Louis, Minneapolis and St. Paul.) There are 
no great buildings, outside the group that make the city 
famous— viz., the Cathedral, the Baptistery, and the Lean- 
ing Tower. The Baptistery is noted for its wonderful echo, 
one sound producing fifteen distinct repetitions. The 
Leaning Tower is, of course, the marvel of the place. It 
is one hundred and eighty feet high, and has eight stories, 
with a staircase winding through the inner wall. There 
it stands these six hundred years, apparently tottering, 
without crack or rent. As to its obliquity, some ascribe 
it to accident, others to design. It is most probable that 
the German architect intended to show how well he could 
keep a building within its center of gravity ; and he has 
succeeded indeed. 

And as this is the last city on our way before we reach 
Rome, let us sit down under the Leaning Tower, heedless 
of its threatening attitude, and reflect a little on what we 
have seen, and the kind of people we have met. We 



136 



A HOLIDAY. 



have been, let us fancy, in hotels, at tables-d'hotes^ on real 
railroad cars. Let us exchange a few thoughts on travel- 
ers and traveling. 

Many qualities are requisite to make up the good 
traveler. He must have a good constitution, good hu- 
mor, and a fair amount of perseverance. He must be 
prepared for mishaps, ups and downs, accidents. If he 
travel as a pedestrian, " roughing it," he must do so with- 
out luxuries — yea, sometimes without necessities. If there 
is no bed, he must be ready to sleep on the floor ; if there 
is no food, he must be prepared to fast ; and these things 
he must endure with the best grace and humor. He need 
not have much luggage — 'tis a drag — but he must have 
much delicacy of feeling, good-will, politeness, and a de- 
cent suit of clothes. It is essential that he have a good 
memory, lest he forget his soap — they never give soap in 
continental hotels — his toothbrush, or, above all, his um- 
brella. He should not have tight shoes or collars; every- 
thing must sit lightly and comfortably upon him. He 
should try to be as good-humored in the dusty railroad 
car as on the lovely hotel veranda in the balmy twilight. 
Among his fellow-travelers he should not be lavish with 
his money, but he should be unsparing of polite attention 
and good-fellowship. Any man thus equipped is likely to 
be a good compagnon de voyage. He will be always and 
everywhere more or less at home. He will make ac- 
quantances, perhaps friends. At table-d'hdte he will be 
interesting in what he says, and interested in what he 
hears. He will be obliging, and will pass the salt or pep- 
per when needed. Nor will he be insulted as the man 
was who, being asked rather often to reach the salt, 
asked, "Do you take me for a waiter?" "No," was the 
reply, " I mistook you for a gentleman." 

It is lamentable to see how many there are who travel 

% 



A HOLIDAY. 



without benefiting themselves or affording comfort to 
others. They go because others go. They visit this city 
or that, this gallery or the other, simply because it is 
fashionable. Others have gone, and speak much of these 
places ; and surely they are as good as Jones, for instance, 
who went to Switzerland last summer, and is now the idol 
of the town. They are quite as good as Mrs. Snibbs, who 
spent her holiday at Venice, and is now invited to every 
tea-party in the village. Yes, they go and they follow a 
certain routine, and see certain things which do not inter- 
est them in the least. They return home not without 
conceit and wrong impressions. They remember little 
things and forget what they went to see. You will be 
sure to hear from them where they missed a train, or were 
late for a dinner ; but they could not tell a photo of St. 
Mark's from one of the Paris Madeleine. 

And this is pitiful, for there are few persons who can 
not improve themselves by traveling. Every person has 
a forte — a hobby — some taste to indulge, some talent to 
develop, some inclination to satisfy. But it is lamentable 
to see people who have no taste for painting, for instance, 
dragging themselves through interminable picture gal- 
leries, and straining their eyes at works of art they know 
nothing and care less about. If they love architecture, 
let them go and examine the wonderful old edifices, 
bridges, or towers that are everywhere around. If they 
have a weakness for flowers, there are beautiful gardens 
on exhibition outside every city, nurseries where tenderest 
plants are cared for, strengthened, acclimated. The mar- 
vels of sculpture are within reach ; the glories of music 
are produced in every concert-room or casino. The engi- 
neer, the statesman, the farmer even, has a large arena 
and abundant opportunity to improve himself in his favor- 
ite sphere. 

10 



138 



A HOLIDAY. 



xAnd people should bring no prejudices with them 
when they go abroad. They should not pronounce 
everything hideous and absurd simply because they have 
not been accustomed to see these things from childhood. 
By and by, when they are longer in the country, they will 
find that these very things are, after all, the best and fit- 
test for the time and the place and the climate. They 
wnll conclude that whatever is is best, and that the fittest 
usually survives. 



A TRANSATLANTIC HOLIDAY. 



///. AT ROME, 

Delivered at the Church of the Sacred Heart, Brooklyn. 

A FEW words before we enter Rome. Over the sunny 
land of Italy there hangs to-day a cloud of social, civil, 
and religious gloom. Like the French, the people of Italy 
as a body, the peaceful, law-abiding multitude, are loyal 
Catholics, as devoted to Leo XIII as they were to Pius 
IX before the States of the Church were confiscated to 
the present Government. To them and to the world Leo 
is not less a Pope because he is not also an Italian prince. 
To them and to the world he is more like Christ, not 
having whereon to lay his head ; more Christ's vicar 
now than ever — without a home, without a country, 
speaking to the Catholic heart of every man, in every 
land. He is ours now more than ever. We feed him, we 
clothe him, and in doing so we feel that we are ministering 
to Christ himself. If he were the friend of kings and 
princes and ministers, we would not love him so much; 
but when we know that they hate him, our love increases 
in proportion. 

This is the very feature that makes the Pope the great 
test nowadays, the great bugbear in the eyes of non- 
Catholics. Be what you like, but have no pope. Call 
yourself a Catholic; that is no offense at all. A clergy- 
man may be as High Church as he pleases; he may call 
himself a priest — yea, a Catholic priest ; he may even talk 
about his seven sacraments, his communion, his " mass.*' 

(139) 



A HOLIDAY. 



He may "receive" confessions; wear a biretta in church 
and a Roman collar on the streets; but as long as he has 
no pope, instinct tells his Protestant friends he is a broth- 
er. He and they may agree to differ on this or that point 
of dogma; they may split hairs regarding church cere- 
mony — how to swing a censer or sprinkle water ; they may 
even abuse one another in Church journals; but they all 
become friends in the common virtue of hating the Pope. 
Did not the Scribes, who hated the Pharisees, shake hands 
with them when they met to plot against Jesus? Yes; 
and Herod and Pilate, who had not been on speaking 
terms, began a lifelong friendship on the day before the 
crucifixion. 

We are entering Rome in the twilight of a lovely sum- 
mer day. What memories crowd upon us ! They come 
now dark and saddening, now lightsome and joyous, then 
mingling so strangely with each other that we know not 
whether the feeling is a pleasant one. It is half pleasing, 
half depressing, wholly bewildering. Memories, sacred 
and secular, chase each other in quick succession as we 
pass for the first time in our life under the venerable arch- 
ways of that wondrous city. Centuries of wistful history 
hang around each pillar and wall and gateway. Every 
street speaks a volume, every house is chronicled in story. 
We are in Rome, the seat of earth's greatness, the center 
of earth's prowess, the focus of earth's empire. We stand 
wathin the walls of that proud capital whose banners 
waved in the Indian East, whose arms glistened under the 
Pillars of Hercules — Rome, conqueror of nations, teacher 
of the world, " lone mother of dead empires ! " 

History tells us that when Richard the Lion-hearted 
soldier of the Cross, caught the first glimpse of the shining 
roofs of Jerusalem, he came down off his horse, prostrated 
himself in the dust, and wept tears of anguish because the 



A HOLIDAY. 



141 



holy city was yet in the hands of the Saracens. To the 
pilgrim of faith the first sight of Rome to-day can not but 
be suggestive of feelings equally painful ; for that city, 
which, after Jerusalem, is the rarest and most sacred on 
earth, is now under the sway of anti-Christian men. The 
knowledge of this fact throws a gloom over every mem- 
ory, shadowing brightest thoughts and dimming happi- 
est hopes. 

We are in Rome, that city with two mighty histories — 
Christian and pagan ; the one rising gloriously out of the 
ruins of the other. We are in the midst of places whose 
names were familiar in school-days — the Forum, the Tar- 
peian Rock, the Tiber, the Pantheon, the Coliseum. This 
is the city of which Romulus, wandering from yonder hill- 
side, where he had been a shepherd, laid the first founda- 
tion. The first seven kings lived here, then the dictators, 
the triumvirs, the Caesars ! And with their names come 
rushing up such hosts of recollections that the effect is 
overpowering — recollections of days when the world was 
showering its treasures into the lap of Rome, when her 
sons were the noblest, her soldiers the bravest, her sena- 
tors the wisest and most eloquent of earth ! Here are 
arches, columns, vaults, and crumbling ruins that knew 
the noonday of Roman glory, that were old before the 
Caesars came ! Here are streets that were brilliant with 
triumphal pageant as some laurel-crowned warrior re- 
turned from victorious fields, captive kings his trophies, 
a Roman welcome his reward! Here on this Via Sacra 
walked Horace and Cicero and .Virgil, Cato and Corio- 
lanus, Brutus and Julius C^sar ! Oh 1 memory is here no 
fond deceiver; it brings up all the sad realities of other 
days, till, the body fatigued by travel and the mind weary 
with thinking, sleep, the reliever, is welcome. 

Yes, we sleep in Rome. But let us wake at early 



142 



A HOLIDAY. 



dawn to repair to the Capitol, there to look down on the 
smokeless roofs of the yet sleeping city, and to muse over 
the ruins of former glory. Though only three square 
miles are beneath our view, we are looking on a whole 
world, for this spot is the nucleus of the world's history. 
At our feet is the Roman Forum, its pillars glistening in 
the morning sunlight as though they had been erected but 
yesterday. Behind is the Arch of Septimius Severus, ap- 
parently mourning over past glories. Here is the Temple 
of Fortune, and there the rank grass waves over the Palace 
of the Caesars, while away in the distance is the mighty 
Coliseum, towering grandly, and telling her deeds of pa- 
gan sport. These are the very streets through which con- 
quered monarchs, chained to Roman chariot wheels, were 
dragged in ignominious grandeur. The spoils of nations, 
the hostages of kings, the trophies of a thousand battle- 
fields, have passed over this ground. Here great minds 
thought, great men lived, great lips spoke, great hearts 
beat to the thrilling charm of Roman poetry and song. 
The sun is brightening, and reveals to us the tombs on the 
Appian Way ; and through the mist over the marshes we 
see the ancient aqueduct, its giant arches bestriding the 
lonely Campagna. Oh, surely this morning is a golden 
leaf in the book of our life ! 

And this is pagan Rome. Yes ; but where is Christian 
Rome ? Then, indeed, the scene changes. Then, ah, then 
come other thoughts, and we look out upon a place the 
theater of far other deeds. Then come mingling gloom- 
ily other memories — memories of Christian struggle, trial, 
blood : of the Tarpeian Rock, the Amphitheater, the Tiber, 
and the ocean ; memories of the Mamertine, the Cata- 
combs, of Cecilia, Agnes, Sebastian, the pincers, and the 
rack. Here the infant faith of the Nazarene timidly lifted 
its fair form only to be hunted into darkness, into the 



A HOLIDAY. 



crevices of these old archways, into the bowels of the 
earth. These old walls once shone in the blaze that arose 
from the ignited bodies of Christian men and women. 
These ruins looked down on every species of torture. 
That old river received in its yellow current many a 
Christian confessor. And there is the Coliseum, where, 
butchered to make a Roman holiday," the fair sons and 
daughters of Christ were torn by the teeth of ravening 
beasts. Here echoed the amphitheaters to the applauding 
shouts of thousands as the brave martyrs sank to the sand. 

Then we almost perceive the soil grow less red as the 
purity of the martyrs' faith begins to gain the hearts of 
the tyrants themselves. The trampled Church of the 
Catacombs emerges slowly from darkness, creeps into the 
very palace of the kings, and the cross of the crucified 
foreigner serenely sits on the ruins of pagan altars. 
Then all grows Christian around you, and in the light of 
the cross against the sky you behold the dawn of Chris- 
tian liberty. 

All is then changed. Everything has a Christian as- 
pect, instinct, history. " The Scipio's tomb contains no 
ashes now"; for one chamber in St. Calixtus* is worth all 
the tombs on the Appian Way. The few pagan associa- 
tions allied with the Janiculum are lost when you think 
of the Montorio, the golden mount of Peter's crucifixion. 
And what is the Ostian Way, when you are seeking the 
scene of Paul's decapitation ? 

But hark ! The cannon from St. Angelo proclaims 
the hour. We are so long in Rome, and have not yet 
seen St. Peter's ! St. Peter's — 

" Thou of temples old or altars new, 
Standest alone, with nothing like to thee ! " 



* Catacombs. 



144 



A HOLIDAY. 



We stand at the entrance of that magnificent area in 
front of St. Peter's. It is an area resembhng the entrance 
to our city parks, only ten times as spacious. In the cen- 
ter is an obelisk one hundred and thirty feet high, and at 
either side a fountain throwing a jet of water ninety feet 
into the air. Around you are those grand colonnades, 
with their three hundred columns, between each two of 
which two carriages can be driven abreast. Along the 
top are one hundred and ninety-two statues, each twelve 
feet high. 

You stand in front of St. Peter's, and you are rather 
taken aback. The tout ensemble^ as they say, is not start- 
ling, not quite up to the grandeur you looked for, and 
which you justly conceived when reading grand accounts 
of the great Basilica. But the delusion is only momen- 
tary. True, the marble looks old and stained. But who 
would clean it ? Who would rub off the dust of centuries ? 
Who would polish off what three centuries of Italian sun- 
shine has put on ? 

Go up the mighty palisade of steps, and stand under a 
pillar. Oh, are you not small ! You can not reach the 
top of the pedestal, and the pillar is twenty feet thick. 
But enter the portico. You are in an edifice two hundred 
feet long. You are walking on floors of rich mosaic. 
The walls around you speak in mosaics, and over your 
head are rarest frescoes. An equestrian statue of Con- 
stantine and of Charlemagne is at either side. And you 
are yet only in the vestibule of St. Peter's. 

But enter. Again, though but for a moment, there is 
a sense of disappointment. Whether it is that you are 
prepared for greatness, or that you can not take in the 
greatness, or that your " mind, expanded by the genius of 
the spot, has grown colossal," you know not; but you are 
not astonished by the first look at St. Peter's. Ah, it is 



HOLIDAY. 



145 



that your mind is too small to take in the greatness. You 
will visit the great church many times again, and your last 
visit will be the most admiring of all. Your delight will 
partake of rapture. St. Peter's will be to you, as it is to 
all the world that has seen it, the queen of temples, 
" worthiest of God — eternal ark of worship undefiled." 

You are inside the door. Will you walk around by 
the shrines at each side ? or go straight up to that other 
end — oh, so far up ? Will you feast your eyes on this 
mosaic, or stand before yonder statue ? or yet turn your 
eyes up to that glorious ceiling, rich in carving and blazing 
with gold, two hundred feet above your head ? Alas ! you 
are at a loss, and for a moment lost. 

Look up to that far end. It is six hundred and ten 
feet from where you stand — three American city blocks ! 
People are walking there, but they are very pygmies in 
size. Can the distance alone make them appear so small ? 
No ; but the colossal statuary dwarfs them, the vastness 
eats them up, and they are creeping at the feet of mighty 
figures in mosaic. 

Walk up to the center, and you are stopped by a flood 
of blinding light. It is the glow of glory descending 
from the dome, the vast, the wondrous dome" — spread 
like a firmament four hundred feet over your head, bright 
with the sparkling mosaics of Angelo, representing choirs 
of angels arrayed around God's great throne. Under it 
and over the grave of St. Peter is the high altar, with its 
Baldichino of solid bronze, supported by four spiral col- 
umns of exquisite workmanship. The tribune, contain- 
ing the chair of St. Peter, is supported by four fathers of 
the Church — Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom, and Atha- 
nasius. 

Useless and futile would it be to recount each monu- 
ment, to describe each bas-relief and mosaic, or give a 



146 



A HOLIDAY. 



name to each chapel and statue and altar. They are 
legion, and their beauty is perfection. Of the statues, 
Angelo's Fieta, Thorwaldsen's Pius VII, and Canova's 
Clement XIII are considered the best. The last men- 
tioned is a truly magnificent work. Around the kneeling 
statue of the Pontiff is the figure of Death, with his torch 
reversed ; and the sleeping lion at his feet is said to be 
^^one of the finest efforts of the modern chisel.'* The 
Fall of Simon Magus is the only painting in St. Peter's. 

And now ascend the cupola. The way is so wide and 
of so gentle ascent that you could drive a wagon up. You 
are out on the roof, that wondrous roof, where the work- 
men and their families live — a roof of business, with work- 
shops and a fountain of water. Go up around the cupola 
inside, and, standing on the iron terrace, look down on the 
pavement of the church. What a sight ! Men and women 
are minute creeping things, and the Baldichino we spoke 
of, and which is one hundred and twenty feet high, looks 
like a child's toy box. But look at the mosaics, now that 
you are up among them. Oh, what large, hideous, gaping 
things — these figures that looked so small and well-defined 
when seen from the floor ! Ah, they were intended to be 
viewed from a distance. Look at the pen in the hand of 
the evangelist, which, when seen from the floor, you could 
not believe to be six feet in length. 

Go around to the top and into the ball. It will hold 
sixteen persons. Now look out upon Rome — Rome living 
and dead — the Rome of twenty-five hundred years ago 
and the Rome of to-day, the marble city of the Caesars, 
the seven-hilled city of the popes. Except, perhaps, from 
a Jerusalem minaret no more wistfully religious sight can 
greet the human eye on earth. 

And thus you leave St. Peter's, lisping again, and this 
time unconsciously, ''With nothing like to thee!" No, 



A HOLIDAY. 



nothing. It is unique among the ecclesiastical structures 
of this earth. Not all the genius of the world to-day, not 
all the wealth of nations, could erect another St. Peter's. 
So says the Roman, or the Roman enthusiast of any land. 

"And why, my enthusiastic Roman friend?" some sage 
may say ; " can we not in England, with all our wealth 
and genius, erect a church the perfect copy of St. Peter's ? 
Could we not build precisely in accordance with its dimen- 
sions, copy its shrines and statues, imitate its frescoes, and 
swing into heaven another such wondrous dome?" 

Yes, is the reply- — perhaps you could. Providence has 
given you wealth and genius. But build the work ; lay 
the first great stone on the grandest of sites and under 
the happiest of auspices ; build the marvel ; and I say to 
you, as many tourists as ever will cross the English 
Channel to visit St. Peter's at Rome. Why ? Because 
your English St. Peter's is only a copy, a dead photograph, 
a mere exhibit of the living original ; because it has not 
the history of centuries encircling it, or the genius of the 
most favored ages filling it with memories; because it has 
not within its walls the rarest collection of material things 
on the face of the globe. Its pillars must be the gifts of 
captive kings, treasures such as were showered into the 
lap of Rome when Rome was in the zenith of her prowess 
and this world was her empire. Its ornaments must be 
the rarest and the dearest, the prized of wealthy peoples, 
treasured of Oriental kings. Its shrines must be adorned 
by the porphyry of one country, the gold of another, the 
gems of a third. The sacred ashes of such as Peter and 
Paul and nearly all the popes must there have found a last 
resting place. A Constantine and a Charlemagne* must 



* There was a church on the Vatican Hill from before the days of 
Constantine. 



148 



A HOLIDAY. 



be among its earliest patrons. The noblest of earth must 
be its admirers, the greatest of earth must have praised it. 
Literature and eloquence must have rivaled each other to 
give it immortality. Its dome must speak to you of heaven 
and of Michael Angelo ; its statuary breathe the names of 
Bernini and Canova; its mosaics sing of Guido and Do- 
menichino. The view from its cupola must be among the 
rarest on earth. Scenes fraught with pagan and sacred 
interest alike must lie within its shadow. Ruins which 
speak volumes of wondrous story must lie all around. A 
river w^hich was the pride of the proudest empire on earth 
must flow beneath it into a sea whose name is as classic as 
its lovely waters are blue. Pontiffs — But enough ! 

It remains for the Christian tourist in Rome to cherish 
the spirit of pride which Roman memories call forth, while 
he prays that the good God may do what He deems best 
for his fold and for his shepherd. 



ST. TERESA. 



Delivered at St. Teresas CJmrch, N'ew York, 

" She hath opened her mouth to wisdom, and the law of clemency is 
on her tongue. She hath looked well to the paths of her house, and hath 
not eaten her bread idle. Her children rose up and called her blessed." 
— Proverbs, xxxi, 26 et seq. 

In such language as this the Holy Ghost describes 
" the valiant woman," " whose price/' he says, ^' is from 
the uttermost coasts " of the earth. And the Church of 
Jesus Christ, catching up the spirit of the ancient Scrip- 
tures, from which these words are taken, and ennobling 
woman to a degree far higher than was ever thought of in 
the science of pagan philosophy, re-echoes the sentiments 
of Holy Writ, and exclaims : *^Who shall find a valiant 
woman, priceless in her virtue as the pearls found on dis- 
tant shores ? Who shall find her ? Present her to me, and 
/will praise her; and I, with her joyous children, Vv^ill rise 
up and call her blessed." 

This the Church has done in every age of her exist- 
ence. From the days of Peter, her first supreme ruler, 
down to those of Leo, her present one, the Church has 
been distinguished by a feature as ennobling in its nature 
as it is divine in its origin and tendency — that of reverence 
for her saints. They are the theme of her thanksgiving 
every day of the year. They are her heroes. She loves 
them, proclaims their virtues, erects monuments to per- 
petuate their memory and their name, and calls upon her 
children to come and admire them, to " rise up " in their 

(149) 



ST. TERESA. 



admiration and pronounce them blessed." History loves 
to dwell on the exploits of men who did honor to the age 
in which they lived and labored for the glory of their coun- 
try and the good of their kind. And the Church of God, 
moved by similar feelings, loves to linger round the mem- 
ory of those of her heroic children who, while living, were 
examples of every virtue, and when dead were deemed wor- 
thy to be enrolled on the calendar of her saints. In honor 
of these she has instituted festivals, in reverence for them 
she has raised their dust from the tomb to the altar, and 
in their praise she has handed down their honored names 
to distant generations. 

And this feeling she exercises all the more earnestly 
because it is an instinct implanted in the nature of her 
members — a principle, so to speak, of their existence. 
Hence it is that the Church, human in her members, 
though divine in her conservation and tendency, delights 
to honor her martys, her virgins, and her anchorites; that, 
in her holy zeal, she has preserved the bones and ashes 
of herdsmen and slaves, that kings and popes may imitate 
their virtues. And hence it is, my brethren, that, influ- 
enced by this same holy instinct, we are assembled here 
this evening to do honor to one whom the Church loves, 
who has a special claim on your veneration, whose mouth 
was opened to wisdom," on whose tongue was "the law 
of clemency," who, looking well to the paths of her house, 
ate not her bread idle, and whose children to-day in every 
land rise up to proclaim her blessed." 

I would ask you to come with me in spirit to a land 
three thousand miles over the eastern wave — a sunny land 
and Catholic, checkered, indeed, in its history, but a noble 
land withal. The name of the land is Spain, and it is the 
birth-land of her whose life and labors we shall briefly trace 
to-day. It is the foster-land of some of the noblest chil- 



ST. TERESA. 



dren of the Church. It is the land of Loyola, founder of 
the most illustrious order in the Church of God. It is the 
native land of Francis Xavier, the greatest missionary that 
blessed this earth by his presence since the day that Paul, 
the apostle of the nations, was beheaded on the Ostian 
Way. It is the land of Lainez, the greatest theologian in 
the Council of Trent; and of Suarez, the keenest scholastic 
the Church could boast of since the day that Thomas 
Aquinas was laid in his grave at Bologna. It was the 
birth-land of Francis Borgia, Aquaviva, Peter of Alcan- 
tara, Cardinal Ximenes, and John of the Cross. It is the 
land in which the learned Canadian prelate who presides 
here this evening crowned the theological career which 
has made his name illustrious ; for, in the renowned halls 
of Salamanca he laid the foundation of that fame for 
learning which he now enjoys in more than one hemi- 
sphere. 

From the infant days of Christianity that land has been 
Christian, and no other than James the Apostle was its first 
missionary. Nobly and well it kept the deposit of faith 
through the first centuries, though Gaul and Goth more 
than once brought the wave of barbaric invasion. The 
infidel Moors followed. With a covetous eye they looked 
across the strait toward the rock-bound coasts of a beau- 
tiful land. They saw in the distance the graceful Chris- 
tian towers of Seville and the shining fields of Andalusia. 
Then, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the 
other, they spread themselves in hordes over the fair land 
of the Spaniard. For centuries they enjoyed a precarious 
sway in the country ; but her Christianity remained, ay, 
and shone all the more brightly in the very blast that was 
meant for its extinction. And Spain was never more Chris- 
tian than she was on the 2d day of January, 1492, when 
Isabella entered the capital of the Moorish kingdom to 



152 



ST. TERESA. 



receive the homage of the last of its sovereigns. About 
twenty years after this event Teresa, our saint, was born. 

It was a momentous time in Europe. A revolution, 
religious and political, had just burst upon the world. 
The cry of reform was heard through the length and 
breadth of Europe, and the name of Luther was hailed as 
that of a liberator and a reformer. But the Church of 
God soon discerned what was the nature of that revolu- 
tion, what " reform meant, and what manner of man the 
reformer was. From her prolific bosom came forth the 
champions of her truth and her beauty ; from her camp 
came forth, with flaming swords, the noble soldiers v/hom 
God gave her for the fight in that tremendous hour. 
And, as if by magic, a host of learned men — ay, and of 
bold, intrepid women, like our saint — rose up to do battle 
for the Church of Jesus Christ. The Order of Jesus, with 
Ignatius Loyola at their head, were among the bravest 
combatants. Among the others came to the rescue their 
fellow-countrywoman and your patron, Teresa de Cepida. 

Our country, then, is Spain ; our time, three centuries 
ago ; and our saint, Teresa. And I will simply, and 
briefly as possible, present you with a sketch of her life 
and labors. 

I. In Old Castile, resting quietly at the foot of the 
Guadarrama Mountains, and rising like a fortress out of 
the granite rocks on which it stands, is the ancient city of 
Avila. Here, on the 5th of March, 1515, was born a child 
whom her parents named Teresa. She was nobly born, 
for her parents were of the first families in the land. 

Alonzo de Cepida, her father, was a gentle, Christian 
man, a grand specimen of the old Castilian, who was 
never known to lie. The mother, Beatrice Ahumeda, was 
a virtuous and beautiful woman, who gave all her time 
and attention to the education of her children. The 



ST. TERESA. 



young Teresa was remarkable at once for piety and in- 
telligence. She was much given to reading of the lives 
of the saints and of the heroism of the martyrs. Her 
brother Roderick was usually with her in the reading of 
these lives; and so fired were they both with the desire of 
martyrdom, that, thinking heaven easily won by a brief 
suffering, they determined that they, too, would be mar- 
tyrs; they would go across to the Moorish kingdom, 
where, as soon as they arrived, their heads would be cut 
off. Accordingly, without asking leave or saying a word 
to any one, they started, and had crossed the bridge out 
of the town, when an uncle encountered them and took 
them home. The martyrdom project failing, they began 
to build little convents and monasteries in the garden. 
These convents and monasteries fell into ruins as soon 
as built. Then Teresa satisfied her religious aspirations 
by giving to the poor everything she could spare. So 
matters went on until she was twelve years old, and her 
first sorrow came upon her. 

Her mother died. Teresa, the orphan, went in her 
sorrow to a picture of the Blessed Mother, and, prostrate 
before it, she prayed: Mary, take me for thy child; 
I have no mother now ! O Mother of God, be thou a 
mother to me ! " Soon afterward, however, the charm of 
her manners and her talents in conversation gained her 
admiration, and she began, almost unconsciously, to for- 
get herself. She loved to appear to advantage, used per- 
fumes, and dressed in fine clothes. But after some time, 
reflecting seriously on the dangers of this kind of life, she 
became startled, and abandoned it. Who knows ? — she 
may never have become so great a saint if she had not 
experienced the hollowness of such frivolity. It enabled 
her to value all the more the warm love of God which 
afterward so inflamed her heart. 
II 



154 



ST. TERESA. 



At nineteen she became a nun in the Carmelite con- 
vent of her native town. She felt that she was called, and 
she obeyed at once, and cheerfully ; and then she gave her 
whole being generously to God. But, though the order 
was a strict one and cloistered, though fasts were fre- 
quent, the fare meager, and the dress coarse, the rule was 
not carried out as strictly as might be. Teresa's inten- 
tions were the best in the world ; but for some time a de- 
sire to see her friends frequently, and a love for conversa- 
tion with secular persons generally, held possession of her, 
and hindered her from attaining that perfection she so 
much craved. To be sure, her conversation was usually 
on religious matters. Indeed, she tells us she never rel- 
ished any other subject. But all this time she prayed 
most faithfully and fervently. And though she never 
could feel comfort in her prayer, she persevered ; ay, for 
twenty years she prayed in dryness and without consola- 
tion from on high. Perseveringly and nobly she prayed 
that God would yet fill her soul with his love, and teach 
her to be all his, without the slightest affection for crea- 
tures. And all this time the most racking pains were 
slowly martyring her. She never had good health; suf- 
fered continually from paralysis and neuralgia; could not 
digest food, and was often whole days without eating. 

But the prayer of the faithful soul, of the true Spouse 
of Christ, was heard at last, and thenceforth a new life 
opened for her. The clouds in the horizon were slowly 
rising, and the brilliancy of God's love, rewarding her 
twenty years of noble perseverance, came over her soul 
and filled her spirit with unearthly consolation. Teresa 
was another person. To live for God, united with him in 
prayer, forgetful of earth and of self; to perform her 
daily duties for God and in God; to die to herself — were 
henceforth the end and aim of her life. In her desire to 



ST. TERESA. 



be united to God, she used to exclaim, " I die, O my God, 
of not being able to die.'* And in her sufferings her motto 
was, To suifer or to die, O Lord.'* Once her pain was 
so acute that her senses seemed gone ; and, the swoon 
continuing a long time, her grave was made in the convic- 
tion that she was dead. But she rallied, with her motto 
on her lips, "To suffer or to die, O God." Noble words! 
The brave soldier's motto is, To conquer or to die"; 
but Teresa saw conquest only through suffering. 

Thus, while she was a martyr in body she was a seraph 
in soul. Oh, how God rewarded her loyalty ! Oh, how He 
showered blessings upon her ! Her prayer was a miracle 
of union with God. She went on from simple prayer to 
devout meditation ; from meditation to what she calls 
**the prayer of quiet," in which the soul rests, as it were, 
with God ; and, highest of all, to the prayer of union, in 
which the soul, dead to earth, is united absorbingly with 
God. In this prayer our Lord spoke sensibly to her 
heart; and in her ecstasy of love she beheld what few 
eyes have seen, and heard what it is given to few mortals 
to hear, and received into her heart the secrets which God 
whispers only to those who love him like Teresa of Jesus. 
From these conversations with our Lord she drew those 
lessons of sublime wisdom which one meets in every chap- 
ter of her copious writings. Her gift of prophecy, at the 
same time, was simply marvelous ; and her confessors, the 
greatest and wisest of that great and wise period in Span- 
ish ecclesiastical history, were at a loss to know whether 
she was the instrument of Heaven or the agent of the evil 
one. They, and all Spain, soon discovered. Oh, of her 
life from this time forward it is difficult to speak — so ex- 
alted was it, so unearthly, so seraphic ! 

From what we have seen of her life, it is easy to 
infer that she realized to the full the words of our text; 



156 



ST. TERESA. 



that her mouth was ever open to wisdom ; that the law of 
clemency was on her tongue; and that, looking well to the 
paths of her house, she ate not her bread in idleness. But 
henceforth these features are to be illustrated in her life 
more and more clearly. Henceforth she is to look to the 
" paths " of other houses, for she is destined to be a great 
foundress as well as a great saint. 

One day the Sisters were talking together on some 
pious matters, and one of them made a remark which 
Teresa caught up and treasured. The remark — and it was 
made by a relative of our samt — was to the effect that 
it was a pity not to establish in Spain a Carmelite house 
of more strict observance and more severe discipline. 
Teresa, as if by inspiration, formed the project at once. 
She prayed fervently, and was told by God to set to work. 
But, as happens in every great project of the kind, opposi- 
tion met her on all sides. She spoke of it, and was sneered 
at. She wrote for advice, and was discouraged ; for permis- 
sion, and it was denied. She prayed, wrote to Rome, and 
finally got permission. In vain, however ; for the home 
authorities refused. But, like the blind beggar by the way- 
side, the more she was told to desist the more she prayed, 
till, by a holy violence, she conquered. On the banks 
of a bright Catalonian stream slowly rose the outlines 
of a little convent which served as a cloister for Teresa 
and the few generous souls who joined her in the holy 
enterprise. The rule was strict, but their hearts were on 
fire in the cause. There, without money or human en- 
couragement, they entered on a life of mortification and 
poverty. The coarsest serge was their dress; straw or 
the bare floor was their bed ; they wore sandals instead 
of shoes, and they never ate flesh-meat. Insult from 
outside was added to this interior mortification. A 
convent established without a benefice and plenty of 



ST. TERESA. 



money was a thing unheard of in Spain, and the towns- 
people protested they would not aid the movement. 
But God was with his servant. Insult ceased, and it was 
succeeded by admiration. Teresa founded new houses, as 
well of men as of women. No province of Spain but bore 
traces of her superhuman zeal and labor; and before 
she died she had founded more than thirty such houses 
through the length and breadth of Catholic Spain. 

Returning one day from a new foundation, she arrived 
at Alva, and grew seriously ill. She had not broken her 
fast, as she intended to communicate at mass in the morn- 
ing. After mass she retired to her bed, from which she 
never rose. 

And oh, my brethren, the world has seldom seen such 
a deathbed. God was almost visibly with her. She fore- 
told to the very hour the time of her death. Though 
paralyzed with pain, so that she could not move, she sat 
upright the moment she beheld the viaticum. She called 
her sisters around her and spoke to them words of com- 
fort and of hope. For herself, she was in transports of 
joy at the thought that her soul would so soon be united 
to God. " O my God and my Spouse," she would say, 
*^the moment is come for which I so ardently longed ! " 
And after fourteen hours of silent union with God, during 
which time she held the crucifix fast in her hands, she 
expired. 

Miracles, well authenticated, attended her death. A 
dove was seen to fly out of the room the moment she 
died. A tree near her window rebloomed, though it was 
the month of October. 

Thus, at the age of sixty-seven, after nearly fifty years 
of religious life, passed away the great St. Teresa. They 
laid her body in the convent cemetery at Alva; and 
though many times since then it has been seen and ex- 



158 



ST. TERESA. 



amined, the finger of corruption has not touched it. It 
was always found entire, undecayed, and natural-looking. 
She was canonized by Gregory XV, in the year 1622. 

We can never fully realize the greatness of Teresa as a 
religious, unless we bear in mind that during most of her 
life she suffered from the most painful bodily diseases. 
Physicians wondered how she could live. And yet she 
never complained. 

We can not fully realize her greatness as a woman and 
a saint unless we read her works, and, above all, her 
maxims. The maxims of St. Teresa," as they are called, 
are gems of wisdom, sweet and healthy flowers in the gar- 
den of spiritual life. Then, again, we must bear in mind 
that, by the power of her character and the sanctity of 
her life, she revived and reformed the entire Order of 
Carmelites, so that not only the women but the male 
branch of that order recognize her as their mother; 
and in this nineteenth century they rise up and call her 
"blessed." 

II. My dear brethren, we must not let this occasion 
pass without its moral and its lessons. We are all called 
to be saints. You, as well as the canonized in heaven to- 
day, are " the called of Jesus Christ, the beloved of God, 
called to be saints." 

St. Paul, in the epistle which he wrote under the in- 
fluence of the Spirit of God to the Christians of the Church 
at Rome, tells them they are " the called of Jesus Christ, 
the beloved of God, called to be saints." And, with the 
strictest and most rigorous adherence to truth, these words 
apply to each and every one of us — " the called of Jesus 
Christ." The same God that died for Teresa died for 
you and me. 

He has given to you, just as he gave to Teresa, suf- 
ficient grace to save your souls — to become saints. How 



ST. TERESA. 



159 



have you co-operated ? That is the question. Perhaps, 
in your early youth, you began as well as Teresa; but 
you left off, and she continued. And in proportion as you 
were becoming unfaithful, God was withdrawing His grace 
and sin was gaining on you; just as, in proportion as 
Teresa was faithful, God was giving her fresh graces and 
the world was excluded from her mind. This is the brief 
history of it. And now vice and sin have such a mastery 
within you that you have no taste for virtue ; have so 
blinded your religious instincts that you can not even 
understand how one like Teresa could live fifty years in 
the dull cloister and be happy. You marvel at the fact. 
How do these people live, you ask, twenty or thirty or 
fifty years ? How do they spend all the time ? Ah, if the 
love of God is not in our hearts, we can not understand 
it. It is necessary to understand well what it is to love 
God with the whole heart, undivided and fervent, with no 
thought of the world, no desire outside of his will. Look 
back, I would ask you, to the days of your early child- 
hood, when, for a time at least, you felt that you loved 
God and were happy in loving him. Oh, how easy we 
found it then to pray — to kneel a whole hour before the 
blessed sacrament, in the somber quiet of God's house — 
drinking in the fullness of that sacramental love that flows 
from the tabernacle ! And we wondered then that all the 
world felt not the sweetness and tenderness that glowed 
within our young hearts. Salvation was easy to us then. 
We spoke our love so feelingly to the silent tabernacle, 
and we clung so trustingly to our dear Jesus, that oh! 
the very lamp of the sanctuary was a magnet to our souls. 
Confession and communion were beautiful to us then; 
and the very sunshine, when we went out, seemed like the 
perpetual presence of God's smiling beauty and love. 
There are few who have not had moments of this kind in 



i6o 



ST. TERESA. 



youth. Recall them now, and fancy the happiest moment 
of these to have continued twenty or forty or fifty years, 
and you have a faint idea of how the true religious lives in 
the sanctuary of the cloister. But oh! Teresa's sanctity 
was so much more exalted than ours that it partook of 
ecstasy; for God poured down the celestial sunshme of His 
own sweet face upon her, that she might be a more worthy 
spouse to Him, and that she might imitate more closely 
the hidden life of His own sweet Mother in the temple. 

We were once in the love of God, we said. But ah, time 
wore on, months passed away, years followed ; and now 
we are surprised to find that our former fervid love has 
cooled, that the light which led us on has gone out. We 
become anxious and fretful, for we see that we have sinned 
away our childlike love, lost that calm confidence we once 
felt in the presence of God. What have we done to 
change this joy into sorrow ? What was the hour of the 
day or of the night when we first put our hand between 
our soul and the light of God's love, or left unanswered the 
silent, secret whisperings of the Holy Spirit in our con- 
science ? Oh, how uneasy and dry and insipid is our life 
now ! We would willingly run to some lonely place to 
save our souls by prayer and penance. We would gladly 
go to some cloister to give ourselves evermore to God. 
But we can not. We have not courage to do so ; or, if we 
have, the world keeps us back, for it has cruelly thrown 
its toils and its fetters around us, and we are not as free 
to go to God now as when we were a little child. Now, 
duty to the world keeps us back. Ah, God help us, for 
the weary years that have slipped by ! God help us, for 
the weary years we may have yet to toil ! 

But we, my brethren, we, the called of Jesus Christ, 
the beloved of God, called to be saints," what are we to do ? 
Ah, we are weak, but God is with us, and he is strong. 



ST. TERESA. l6l 

He is calling us onward. No matter how the world treat 
us, harshly or kindly, in the midst of miseries and anguish, 
he is with us still, faithful and true to the end. Friend- 
ships may tire and be dissolved ; acquaintance may fail 
and break down when perchance w^e need its warmth 
most; ties of affection maybe rudely broken ; but there 
is one acquaintance, one friend, one partner, whose love 
and kindness and friendship no count of years can weary 
or weaken; who has kept by us from the first ; and who 
loved us all the more — so at least it seemed — the more evil 
he saw in us; who has been constant and faithful to the 
last, though death or inconstancy have removed from us 
those upon whom we leaned the most. He was with us 
at the sunrise, and, no matter how we have strayed away 
since then — whether we have wandered from his love and 
had our feet torn and our hearts seared — he will wait 
upon us till the sunset to fold our worn and weary hearts 
to His ! 

Then let us take courage, and pray to the good God 
who sustained Teresa in her trials and made her so to 
love him. By imitating Teresa ; you will be children of 
prayer ; charitable, with " the law of clemency " ever on 
your tongue ; active, looking diligently to the paths of 
your every-day life; eating no idle bread while you have 
a soul to save and Jesus is calling you to save it. 

And if there come none after you to call you " bless- 
ed," Jesus Christ will call you blessed of his Father," on 
the great counting day — a blessing I crave for you in the 
name of the Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost. Amen. 



DEDICATION OF A CHURCH. 



Delivered at Staatsburg-on-the-Htidson. 

** And I, John, saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down 
out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 

**And I heard a great voice from the throne, saying : * Behold, the 
tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them, and they 
shall be his people ; and God himself with them shall be their God.' " — 
Apoc. xxi, 2, 3. 

The sacred ceremony which we have just witnessed 
naturally awakens in the Catholic mind the liveliest emo- 
tions of faith. Here, on the banks of the noble and his- 
toric Hudson, assisted by a devoted clergy, and in presence 
of a people who rival their ancestors in devotion to God's 
Church, a successor of the apostles has dedicated to divine 
service a temple henceforth to be known as the eucharistic 
home of the Man-God, " the tabernacle of God with men." 
Here, O favored people, you may come as into the house 
of your Father, to speak with your God in holy prayer, 
and to sit down at that altar table where you may taste 
and see how sweet is the Lord.'* Here all are invited, but 
more than others they who are weary and heavily burdened. 
Here, henceforth. Christians will prostrate themselves in 
refreshing humility and prayer; the weak to pray to the 
God of might; the wicked to implore the God of mercy; 
the innocent to praise the God of love. Here, rich and 
poor, youth and old age, will come to pray — to kneel at 
the same altar and assist at the same sacrifice and adore 
the same God. Here will stand the regenerating font of 
baptism. Here husband and wife will be united in that 

(162) 



DEDICATION OF A CHURCH. 



bond which only death can sever. And here is the altar 
for the sacrifice which shall be offered for the sanctifica- 
tion of the living and the eternal repose of the dead. 

But as the public offices of this morning, beautiful 
though they be, are necessarily long, I shall endeavor to 
be brief, and will merely call your attention to two facts : 
first, that Almighty God in all times set aside special 
places for divine worship ; and, secondly, that the sacred 
place par excellence in the New Dispensation is the edifice 
known to us as a Catholic church. 

I. My brethren, God is omnipresent. His immensity 
fills all space. "The heaven is my throne,'* he says, "and 
the earth my footstool." He may therefore be worshiped 
in any part of created Nature — in island, or ocean, or 
prairie. Our Celtic ancestors, ere yet the light of Chris- 
tianity dawned upon them, were wont to climb the hill- 
tops that they might worship the rising sun-god, while the 
grotesque cro7?ilech^ with no other shelter than the blue 
canopy of heaven, was their altar, and the shade of mighty 
oak trees their sanctuary. Yes, O God, saith the Psalmist, 
thou art everywhere. " If I ascend up to heaven, thou 
art there. If I descend to hell, thou art present. If I 
take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost 
parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and 
thy right hand shall hold me.'* 

Nevertheless, He has ever desired that certain particu- 
lar places should be regarded as specially dedicated to 
His service. Thus, at a very early period in the history 
of mankind we find the Almighty appearing to Jacob m 
the mysterious vision of a ladder ; and as the patriarch 
" awaked from sleep " we hear him exclaim, " Indeed the 
Lord is in this place, and I knew it not ! " And, trembling, 
he said : " How terrible is this place ! This is none other 
than the house of God and the gate of heaven." And, 



164 



DEDICATION OF A CHURCH. 



arising in the morn, he took the stone which he had' laid 
under his head, and set it up for a title, pouring oil upon 
the top of it. "And this stone which I have set up for a 
title," said he, "shall be called the House of God." 

Nor can we forget that the Lord once called out from 
the holy bush, and, addressing Moses, said : " Come not 
hither; put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place 
whereon thou standest is holy ground." 

During the forty years that the children of Israel spent 
traveling in the desert their only place of worship was a 
little portable temple, called the tabernacle, which was 
erected wherever they pitched their camp, by the express 
orders of God himself. But the great King David was 
ashamed that no nobler structure was raised for the wor- 
ship of his God. And the Almighty, pleased with His 
servant, promised him that his son Solomon should raise 
a great temple in His honor. And Solomon built the tem- 
ple. And this temple, with its walls of choicest cedar, and 
its oracle of purest gold, with its gilded floors and ex- 
quisitely wrought devices and emblems, contained — what ? 
Only the two stone tablets which Moses received from 
God on Mount Sinai, a portion of manna, and the wand of 
Aaron ! To this temple the Jews came with reverence. 
They entered it only with feelings of awe. Its splendor 
told them of the greatness of their God; its vast propor- 
tions bespoke his immensity ; its brightness proclaimed 
his glory ; and the whole interior, which Scripture tells us 
v/as one blaze of universal gold, brought forcibly to their 
minds the grandeur of the celestial Jerusalem, where he 
reigns and blesses forever. And this, my brethren, was 
God's t^m^^X^^ par excellence^ until the day dawned, until 
the Light came which enlighteneth every man that cometh 
into the world, until "the Word was made flesh and dwelt 
among us." 



DEDICATION OF A CHURCH. 



165 



2. Oh, what a wondrous day, and ominous for this 
world, was that which beheld Jesus ascend through the 
clouds into heaven ! The apostles literally dispersed be- 
fore the face of the ascending Man-God, just as you see 
the clouds flee away from the presence of the noonday sun. 
Then they prepared to go away to the ends of the known 
globe; to do the will of the rearisen Master; to teach 
what he had taught them to teach; and to offer up the 
holy sacrifice in upper chambers, in huts, in forests, and 
catacombs. They were going away to renew the face of 
the earth. Breaking the bonds that bound them to kith 
and kin ; called traitors to a venerable faith ; heralds of a 
doctrine of which the founder had been crucified, they go 
forth to establish a new creed, to erect a strange altar, to 
raise a home for a God become man, to overturn long- 
cherished systems, and to hold up before the face of a 
proud, cross-hating world the ensign of a foreign creed. 
Was ever effrontery like to this ? And victory will crown 
the endeavor; for God is with them, and their religion is 
divine. It will be proclaimed with success in the " far-off 
islands." Where Roman eagles never planted conquest, 
this young faith shall be planted in a fertility all its own. 
No effort at national greatness shall be the principle of 
this new religion. It will not smile upon the success of 
dishonor; it will not worship at the shrine of injustice. It 
will not yield to the prejudices of the multitude, yet its 
mercy shall pass into a proverb. Onward will it move in 
gentle power side by side with every human enterprise, 
to every new dominion on the face of the earth. It shall 
restrain the extravagance of wealth and cheer the loneli- 
ness of poverty. It shall protect right against might, and 
sustain womanly virtue as against the mere lust of man. 
Amid the corruptions of a sinful world it shall proclaim 
the glory of the incorruptible God." It shall point 



DEDICATION OF A CHURCH. 



where the heavens show forth his greatness, and upon his 
praises it shall exhaust all its eloquence. It shall pro- 
claim the inborn nobility of man, for " in him we live and 
move and are," and in hope of future reward it shall be 
the inspiration of noblest deeds. It shall protect com- 
merce and industry, science and art and genius; and from 
the poet's pen, or the painter's pencil, or the sculptor's 
grace, it shall ever point to the home where beauty never 
fades and hope shall not deceive. 

Such was the religion which began its career by the 
sacrifice of the mass at the Last Supper. Its founder was 
Priest and Victim that night, as He is to-day. An upper 
room, hired or loaned for the occasion, was the first 
place of sacrifice; perhaps tradition would bear us out in 
calling it the first Catholic church. The second mass is 
said to have been celebrated by Saint Peter, on Pentecost 
Sunday, immediately after the descent of the Holy Ghost, 
and in the same coenacle where our Lord first broke " the 
bread of life." Doubtless the holy sacrifice was not in- 
frequently offered in that favorite room in the house of 
John, on Mount Sion. And as, in the early years of the 
Church, several co^tcelebrafed,' we infer that the apostles 
often offered mass in common and simultaneously, just as 
the ordaining bishop and the newly ordained priests do to 
this day in the mass of ordination. 

For centuries mass was offered chiefly in private 
houses. How rude were the altars, the sacred vessels, 
the vestments, and the surroundings, we can easily im- 
agine. How secret the rites of the Church of the Cata- 
combs in the days of " the discipline of the secret," 
Catholic history has taught us; for the world was up in 
arms against the Church. Martyrdoms were numerous, 
and in the most civilized city on earth Christians were 
butchered to make a holiday ! But with the miraculous 



DEDICATION OF A CHURCH. 



167 



conversion of Constantine came the dav/n of a new era. 
Christian worship became public; Christian churches were 
erected, and genius and science and the fine arts became 
the handmaids of religion. The Mohammedans were as 
powerless to check the growth of Christianity in the East 
as the Moors in the Southwest. And though countless 
hordes of Northern warriors more than once swept down 
upon the classic plains of Italy, threatening Christian 
civilization and civilized life, they went back softened by 
the mild tenets of the gospel, accompanied by Roman 
priests, and the names of Jesus and Mary were heard for 
the first time on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube ; 
then, turning their spears and axes into spades and plow- 
shares, they laid the foundations of the great Christian 
nations of to-day. And as you hear the birds at morning 
dawn sing out their praises to the benign god of day, so, 
in the dawn of the Church's freedom, the praises of God 
arose from a thousand shrines with the incense of a thou- 
sand altars. A renaissance moral as well as physical fol- 
lowed. For, while forests were searched for choicest 
woods, and mines yielded their tributes of richest jewels, 
and all that was rarest in Nature and dearest in Art was 
consecrated to God's visible temples, his praises began to 
echo from every vault and tower and dome, and the one, 
clean, holocaust oblation was offered up from the rising 
to the setting sun. 

But a sad feature connected with the Church's prog- 
ress was, that scarcely had external opposition ceased 
when the children of her own bosom rose up to smite her. 
Oh, who shall pen the history of those destructive heresies 
which all but rent the beautiful unity of God's Church ! 
Alas ! from Simon Magus to Arius, and from Arius to 
Luther, and from that German apostate down to the last 
self-commissioned creature of pride, the Church has had 



DEDICATION OF A CHURCH. 



to Struggle, to wrestle, and to suffer. But the voice of 
the center of unity, the Vicar of Christ, was always heard 
in time of danger, and it was a voice of no uncertain 
sound ; for it mattered not who the offender was — king 
or peasant, priest or layman — if he refused to hear that 
voice, he was shown up before the world and cut off as a 
rotten branch. As it was then, so is it now, so shall it 
ever be. 

And as the centuries advanced, the Church evinced a 
growing anxiety to adorn her sacred edifices. Has she 
not erected the noblest on earth ? Let the marvel on the 
Vatican Hill give answer. Give answer, too, the glories 
of architectural art the world over — Milan, Cologne, 
Seville, Westminster, New York. She has indeed " loved 
the beauty of God's house and the place where his glory 
dwelleth." She wishes her children to love it, too. For 
this purpose she would make her temples speak to the 
heart, and point heavenward. She would make the walls 
speak the gospel, and the niches hold, saints and angels 
teaching lessons of sanctity. She would give the edifice 
an imposing exterior, a heavenly face; and inside that 
face she would place a tongue of sweetest sound, to call 
the faithful to God and to fling out upon the air intelli- 
gence of Christian joy or divine mourning. And she 
would rear over all a lofty spire, slender, pointed, and 
graceful; and on it, as near to heaven as man could reach, 
the cross of the dying Redeemer. Oh, beautiful, harmo- 
nious, soul-inspiring religion of Jesus Christ ! 

Oh, then, favored Christian people, come to this 
church, which your generosity has erected, with pro- 
found feelings of Christian pride and fervid faith. Come 
and refresh your souls in prayer. Come and unite with 
your good pastor in the tremendous sacrifice of Calvary. 
Bring your children and your children's children here, to 



DEDICATION OF A CHURCH. 



169 



the regenerating water of baptism, to the cleansing tribu- 
nal of penance, to receive the strengthening Spirit of God 
in confirmation ; but, above all, to the table of the bread 
of angels, the body and blood, soul and divinity of your 
Lord Christ Jesus. Come and pray to Mary his Mother 
during this month of her holy rosary. Finally, endeavor 
to keep the commandments, that they may lead you to 
him, the eternal Beauty — into that celestial temple of 
which he, the Lamb, is the eternal Lamp ; that, when life 
is past, you m.ay experience the joy of those perennial 
delights which God has prepared for those who love him. 



12 



CHURCH AND STATE. 



Delive7'ed in the Church of the Transfiguration, 
Dom. xii, p. Pent. Matthew, xxii, 15-21. 

To ensnare Jesus in his speech was the aim of the 
Pharisees in this day's gospel. If he denied tribute to 
Caesar, they would accuse him to the authorities as guilty 
of high treason. If, on the contrary, he made it essential 
to pay tribute, they would denounce him as a destroyer of 
the people's liberties; for they wished to appear free from 
Roman power. They reckoned, how^ever, without their 
host ; and, in a reply of which the prudence and spirit of 
justice has been the admiration of the world ever since, 
he put to shame and to flight the hypocrites who would 
discomfit him : " Render to Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." 

This answer opened up the great question of Church 
and State, the relations between the eternal decrees of 
God governing man and the laws made by men govern- 
ing themselves. If every country had its own national 
Church, then religion and government — Church and State 
— would work peacefully together. It was so before the 
time of Christ on earth. Under the pre-Christian system, 
the hero was a saint and the saint a hero. Nay, more : 
the man that proved himself worthy of his country was 
honored, age after age, after death, until his name was 
lost in fable and he became a god. Their gods, then, 
were only men deified, their goddesses deified women. 
The more the people worshiped these gods and goddesses 

(170) 



CHURCH AND STATE. 



171 



the more they pleased the national government, and thus 
the truly religious man was the best citizen. 

Came, then, the lowly founder of a nonnational faith, 
of a Church wide, universal, owning no nation, confining 
itself to no particular system of government, but throw- 
ing its great arms in loving sympathy around every 
human heart on earth — on empire, and island, and ocean. 
The shock was startling to the world ; and the poor people 
among whom he taught his doctrines, and who had lost 
their national prestige — yea, their national existence — 
rejected him with scorn because he was not the restorer 
of their national honor. He came unto his own, and his 
own received him not." 

Nor was he better received elsewhere. Rome re- 
garded the Christian system as a revolutionary move- 
ment, destined to dissolve the integrity of her empire, 
and to raise the image of a foreigner over the ruins of 
her darling altars. 

Thus was the preaching of Christ in this matter in 
direct conflict with the whole theory of ancient govern- 
ment. By commanding tribute to be paid to God as well 
as to Caesar he distinguished between Church and State; 
he proclaimed the spiritual allegiance of the soul to its 
God, independent of the State — an allegiance superior to 
earthly government. He proclaimed that man must first 
be a citizen of a higher world, and that, by consequence, 
he must first obey the laws of this supernatural kingdom, 
oppose him who may. 

Thus, my friends, was religion lifted higher than the 
State ; thus were the old bonds of servitude cut asunder, 
and religious faith, hitherto narrow and national, declared 
catholic for all the world, for every child of Adam. Be- 
yond island and ocean and mountain were to be found 
the apostles of this new faith, addressing alike Jew and 



172 



CHURCH AND STATE. 



Gentile, free and fettered, the barbarian child of the 
desert and the cultured Roman senator; and thus was de- 
'livered to the world a doctrine the most beneficent and 
humanitarian that the world had ever dreamed of. 

This was the very feature — this nonnational and 
catholic character — in the Church which brought down 
upon it, as it brings down upon it to-day, the opposition 
of national governments. Christians, they argued, owed 
an allegiance outside the State ; they could not, there- 
fore, be good citizens ; they could not, therefore, render 
to Csesar the things belonging to Caesar. Hence the 
prisons were soon filled, the amphitheaters supplied with 
victims, the Tiber's yellow turned into the color of blood, 
the Tarpeian Rock converted into a death-scaffold, and 
the blue bosom of the ocean made the living sepulchre of 
martyred thousands. There was not so much of this 
persecution in the middle ages, for then the Church was 
the safest ally and the strongest friend of the State, and 
its head the common arbiter of Christendom. 

You will permit me to remark here that, under some 
circumstances, a union between Church and State is not 
very desirable. When the State protects the Church and 
supports it, the people have no share in the support of the 
clergy, and thus the beautiful tie of love — that tie which 
has so much of sacred poetry in it — between priest and peo- 
ple is cruelly broken. The priest supported by government 
is looked upon as a political rather than a religious person, 
and the people begin to suspect that he does not love them 
as well as if he lived by the charity of their sustenance. 

Much of the hatred connected in the minds of wicked 
men with the name and ofiice of the priesthood arose from 
the political rather than from the ecclesiastical side of the 
priest's history in the past. At all events, all kinds of gov- 
ernments have been allied to the Church, and, as each of 



CHURCH AND STATE. 



them has been discredited, it is better now not to touch any 
of them. They can not be touched without defilement. 

Be assured of it, my friends, that no State ever yet gave 
its support to the Church without demanding some sacri- 
fice of the Church's liberty. The day may come when 
States will see that the Church has the true wisdom, after 
all. Yielding to her principles, they will find prosperity 
and happiness. Church and State will then be one, and the 
millennium of earthly government will have come to us. 
But come what may, the Church will triumph in the end. 
She saw the beginning of all the governments of to-day, 
and she shall live to behold their dissolution. Even 
worldly men — men of thought and her enemies — have ad- 
mitted this. They have attested it in pages luminous with 
the brilliancy of rhetorical figure and impressive by rea- 
son of their intense sincerity. From among them, listen 
to Macaulay in his famous passage on Ranke's History of 
the Popes : " She saw the commencement of all the gov- 
ernments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that 
now exist in the world ; and we feel no assurance that she 
is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great 
and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, 
before the Frank had passed the Rhine; when Grecian elo- 
quence still flourished at Antioch; when idols were still 
worshiped in the Temple of Mecca. And she may still ex- 
ist in undiminished vigor when some traveler from New 
Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand 
* on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of 
St. Paul's." And I read it as a powerful testimony to the 
fact that human governments have died and are passing 
away every day, but the Church survives them all. 

How numerous are the enemies of the Church ! How 
numerous are the friends of the State as opposed to the 
Church ! The children of the Reformation have divided 



174 



CHURCH AND STATE. 



into a hundred sects, all equally hostile to the Church. 
They rave in fury against her. But what is the result of 
their fierce declamations, their predictions of the Church's 
ruin ? Alas for them ! the Church lives still, and they have 
gone away from earth, forgotten, save by those who from 
time to time fitfully revive their memory in fruitless as- 
saults against the Church. 

And what of those who started new doctrines and 
would teach the world ? Their fate was foretold by Jesus 
himself : " Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not 
planted shall be rooted up. Let them alone. They are 
blind, and leaders of the blind ; and if the blind lead the 
blind, both fall into the ditch." Many have already fallen 
into the ditch — i. e., into infidelity. Many are on the eve 
of a fall. They can not falsify the w^ords of Christ. They 
can not attack a doctrine of Christianity without blas- 
pheming Jesus. Heresy became the nurse of infidelity. 
The Bible, once so prized by Protestantism, is now, in the 
mind of many eminent members of that persuasion, only 
a book of myths and fables. Nay, the very divinity of 
Jesus is everyday impugned; while reason and materi- 
alism are the only guides now left to men outside the 
Church. 

In the midst of all this wreck, this toppling over of re- 
ligions and religious systems, stands out boldly and un- 
hurt the one old Catholic faith, unchanging and un- 
changed. Like a granite pillar amid the fragments of the 
Roman Forum, she stands proudly erect, and smilingly 
looks down on the universal chaos at her feet. Oh, how 
luminously now are verified the words of our dear Re- 
deemer : " The stone which the builders rejected, the same 
has become the head of the corner ; . . . and whosoever 
shall fall upon this rock shall be broken, but upon whom- 
soever it shall fall, him will it grind to powder." So has 



CHURCH AND STATE. 



it been in the past, and we doubt not that in this our day 
and generation, history will again repeat itself. 

And as it has been with time, so has it also been with 
place. If she lose in the North, she gains in the West ; if 
she is persecuted in the East, she is in pride and beauty 
in the South. If in the darkness of trial she is silent and 
deathlike, in the noontide of religious freedom she is 
bright and jubilant. She is like to a little plant that 
grows on the slopes of the Nile. It is called the rose of 
Jericho." Its life is freshest and fairest in the early 
morning, but it dies ere the fiery sun sinks to rest. Yet, 
oft at eventide, the wandering Arab, sitting by the banks 
of that river, plucks carelessly this dying plant, dips it 
in the water at his feet, and the air is suddenly filled 
with the sweetest aromas. The plant revives, diffuses its 
sweetness away on the desert air, where it falls, blooms 
again and dies. Lifeless it is borne back again, and its 
sleeping beauteousness is reawakened in the waters, and 
its aroma is wafted again over those eternal solitudes far 
away from the stream that gave it life. And that East- 
ern plant, in its life and seeming death, is an emblem of 
the Church of God. Baffled in the East, she turns to the 
West, fells its gloomy forests, and invites its untaught 
children to come and worship at her altars. Thwarted in 
the West, she seeks again the East and warms up the 
embers of its dying faith. Such has been the past of the 
Church, such will her future be: trials and triumphs in 
her militant career ; triumphs unalloyed and perennial 
hereafter ! 



THE LATE POET-LAUREATE. 

Delivef'ed before the Finelon Readuig Circle, 

Sixty years ago appeared the first poem of Alfred 
Tennyson. Some time ago he died, having been forty- 
three years the poet-laureate of Great Britain. In our 
brief half hour this afternoon we can merely glance over 
such a life, as the swallow skims over the lake. The first 
efforts of the young poet fell on cruelly unyielding ground. 
It was an era of poets — great poets. " There were giants 
in those days." Some had just gone; some were yet liv- 
ing. The versatile Wizard of the North," whose hand 
had swept the sweetest chords of Scottish m.instrelsy, had 
just died. Byron, too, indeed, was dead, but his fame was 
bright and high in the literary firmament. Shelley had 
gone before, but his reputation was only growing on the 
English mind. Keats and Coleridge and Wordsworth had 
their ardent friends in every circle. No wonder that, in a 
domain so richly stocked, the critics were ready to snarl 
at the poetic efforts of a juvenile intruder. And so Poems, 
by Two Brothers, came into the light only to die unre- 
warded.* Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, however, received am- 
ple notice. No sooner was it in print than the critics 
pounced upon it like a pack of hungry wolves. It met 
with the same reception that Hours of Idleness and 
Endymion had met before it. Ah, had Alfred Tennyson 



* Not only so, but Coleridge expressed the opinion that only those 
marked C. T." — Charles Tennyson — gave promise of a coming poet. 

(176) 



THE LATE POET-LAUREATE. 



177 



the boldness and self-conceit which stood Byron in good 
stead when he lashed the English bards and Scotch re- 
viewers, his Muse would not have been silent for ten years 
afterward. But in 1842 the voice that men had forgotten 
burst forth again in sweetest melody and pathos, clear 
and strong, and challenging censure. The British literary 
public hailed it with welcome, and their approving cry 
cheered on the poet; and the lyrist thrilled again, and the 
singer sang. And when came into light Locksley Hall, 
Morte d'Arthur, The May Queen, and The Two Voices, a 
fixed star was set in the poetic sky of England; and 
Alfred Tennyson's name was on every tongue, and his 
songs in every school-book and miscellany. Yes ; and if 
The Princess, which appeared four years afterward, met 
with scant approval then, we of to-day know how, like 
good wine, its flavor has improved with age ; w^hile its 
charming songs — Sweet and Low, As through the Land, 
The Splendor falls on Castle Walls, Home They Brought 
Her Warrior Dead, Ask Me no more — have just claim to 
be what they have been called, the finest group of 
songs produced in our nineteenth century." Of In Memo- 
riam I shall not now speak : its consideration will fit- 
tingly, close this cursory sketch of the laureate. And as 
his Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, his 
Charge of the Light Brigade, and even his Maud — with 
some restrictions — added nothing to his fame, and were 
pronounced "scarcely more than a residuum of Alfred 
Tennyson," we shall w^aive them without com.ment, except 
to say that, in the very year (1855) of their publication 
in one volume, the University of Oxford conferred on 
Tennyson the degree of D. C. L. The Idyls of the King, 
upon which his fame to a great extent rests, were begun 
some years later, and continued to a very few years ago. 
These, with Enoch Arden, the two dramas Queen Mary 



178 



THE LATE POET-LAUREATE. 



and Harold, The Lover's Tale, and Locksley Hall Sixty 
Years After, make up the complement of the great works 
of Tennyson. 

Regarding his career as an English gentleman, his life, 
especially his domestic life, was a happy one. In 1852 
was born to him a son, whom he named Hallam, in honor 
of his dead friend and college rival; and in 1854 another, 
Lionel, came to brighten his home. Lionel died in India 
six years ago, but left three sons, who were by their grand- 
father's bedside when he died. The poet's death was a 
peaceful one. The Dirge from Cymbeline lay open near 
his hand, and the morning moonlight, through an open 
window, bathed his face. All was peaceful — fitting close 
to the life he had led, and suggestive of the touching lines 
in one of his latest poems : 

" Twilight and evening bell, 
And after that the dark ; 
And may there be no sadness of farewell 
When I embark." 

Alfred Tennyson was a true poet. He was born to 
speak with Nature, and he made Nature speak with him. 
From his childhood he hated crowds, noise, activity ; and 
so the ordinary life of the nineteenth century became un- 
bearable to him. Truth to tell, he was awry with his early 
domestic surroundings. The Tennysons were poor, and 
intended Alfred to earn his own living in mercantile pur- 
suits. He coolly chose poverty and poetry, however, and 
set himself to the perfection of his powers of versification. 
And these were marvelous. 

His taste for lyric poetry had been formed by his 
father, who taught him to learn and recite the Odes of 
Horace. Then he studied Keats, whom in after-years he 
called his master. It is evident that through the studies 



THE LATE POET-LAUREATE. 



179 



of Horace, Keats, Shelley, and Byron he perfected himself 
in the elegance of form and flow and rhythm. Whether 
you follow him through his legendary and chivalrous 
poems, such as Morte d'Arthur and Godiva, or through 
his pathetic efforts, such as The May Queen, or Dora, or 
yet through his love poems, The Gardener's Daughter, 
the Miller's Daughter, The Talking Oak, or Locksley 
Hall, you can not but marvel at his powers in this direc- 
tion. The last named — Locksley Hall — is the most fin- 
ished of Tennyson's works, passionate, grand, intense. It 
is full of the imagery, enthusiasm, energy, and impetuos- 
ity of Byron, with the pictorial beauty and melody of 
Coleridge. 

Every one who has perceived with what minute fidelity 
he paints English landscape knows what a change his 
scene-paintmg underwent when, after his marriage, he 
moved from the wolds " and the "gloaming flats" and 
the " level waste " of his Lincolnshire surroundings to the 
beautiful rich meadows and orchards and brooks of his 
new Isle-of-Wight home. Indeed, so precise in expression 
and so scrupulously true to Nature was he at this time, 
that one critic predicted : " From the care and fastidious- 
ness with which Mr. Tennyson elaborates his thoughts and 
expressions, from his choice diction, word-painting, and 
verbal melody, he will probably never be a voluminous 
writer." Well, he has not been a very voluminous writer, 
but what he has done he has done well. No poet ever 
wrote less twaddle, less "sweet nothings," so few verses 
that you tire of. No poet was ever so true, so correct ; 
in verse so exquisite and in rhythm so melodious. He 
was superior to all English poets in that he was truest to 
the best traditions of literary English expression. You 
have this excellence in all his lyrics ; you have it in Locks- 
ley Hall, you have it in Enoch Arden. What can be truer 



i8o 



THE LATE POET-LAUREATE. 



to Nature, either in its inanimate or living phases, than 
the opening pictures in Enoch Arden ? — 

" Here on this beach, a hundred years ago, 
Three children of three houses — Annie Lee, 
The prettiest little damsel in the port, 
And Philip Ray, the miller's only son, 
And Enoch Arden, a rough sailor's lad 
Made orphan by a winter shipwreck — played 
Among the waste and lumber of the shore, 
Hard coils of cordage, swarthy fishing-nets, 
Anchors of rusty fluke, and boats up- drawn ; 
And built their castles of dissolving sand 
To watch them overflowed, or following up 
And flying the white breaker, daily left 
The little footprint daily washed away. 

"A narrow cave ran in beneath the cliff; 
In this the children played at keeping house. 
Enoch was host one day, Philip the next, 
While Annie still was mistress ; but at times 
Enoch would hold possession for a week : 

* This is my house, and this my little wife.' 

* Mine too,' said Philip, * turn and turn about ; * 
When, if they quarreled, Enoch, stronger made, 
Was master ; then would Philip, his blue eyes 
All flooded with the helpless wrath of tears, 
Shriek out, * I hate you, Enoch ! ' and at this 
The little wife would weep for company, 

And pray them not to quarrel for her sake, 
And say she would be little wife to both." 

And yet this gentle man, who caroled in The Mermaid, 
who mourned in In Memoriam, and who reveled so ten- 
derly in The Talking Oak, fairly takes away our breath 
in the satire of his Lady Clara Vere de Vere. What one 
of this poem's stanzas is not replete with exquisite 
irony ? 



THE LATE POET-LAUREATE. igl 

" Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere, 

From yon blue heavens above us bent ^ 
The grand old gardener and his wife 

Smile at the claims of long descent. 
Howe'er it be, it seems to me 

'Tis only noble to be good : 
Kind hearts are more than coronets, 

And simple faith than Norman blood. 

** I know you, Clara Vere de Vere ; 

You pine among your halls and towers ; 
The languid light of your proud eyes 

Is wearied of the rolling hours. 
In glowing health, with boundless wealth, 

But sickening of a vague disease, 
You know so ill to deal with time, 

You needs must play such pranks as these. 

*' Clara, Clara Vere de Vere, 

If time be heavy on your hands, 
Are there no beggars at your gate, 

Nor any poor about your lands ? 
Oh ! teach the orphan boy to read, 

Or teach the orphan girl to sew ; 
Pray Heaven for a human heart, 

And let the foolish yeoman go." 

When Tennyson, a few years ago, accepted his lordly 
title, some contributor to Punch was very severe in a 
poem, "Lord Vere de Vere," referring very pointedly to 
coronets, kind hearts, and Norman blood. But he was 
truly worthy of the honor, as was evident the first day he 
entered the House and wrote his name on the roll of 
peers. The poet that day was not in the smallest degree 
elated. His true eminence towered supremely above the 
adventitious honor. Yet he could not but feel the grati- 
fication which had arisen, not from the fulfillment of an 
ambition which he had never felt, but from the sense 
of secure fame involved in the recognition by his coun- 



l82 



THE LATE POET-LAUREATE. 



try of the priceless services he had rendered to her litera- 
ture. And we in America say, " Bravo, Tennyson ! " and 
to his wreath, Esto Ferpetica ! " 

I once engaged a friend to ask the laureate how he 
pronounced " Vere.'* He answered, " Did you not notice 
that the word rhymes with ^ h-e-a-r,' in the fifth stanza ? 
However," he added, " in public recital I prefer the broad 
sound." 

The same friend told me that, dining with the poet on 
this very occasion, an incident occurred which exemplified 
how touchy, and even huffy," the laureate could become 
on the least provocation. (He was unusually spiritual?^ 
I trust, my lord, you will not object," said the host, a 
prince of good fellows, " to eat a * flying angel' " (It was 
an oyster, buried in exquisitely roast bacon.) In indig- 
nant silence the poet set the plate aside, and very soon he 
tilted his cloak over his shoulders and was gone. When 
my friend, now a distinguished litterateur of New York, 
whose name I shall be happy to reveal privately, regaled 
us lately with this incident, one or two present muttered 
the word crank. Well, Tennyson was not quite a crank. 
He abhorred interviewers, loved seclusion, loathed ob- 
truders, despised newsmongers, was not uneasy if he 
insulted the inquisitive, and generally wished to be let 
alone. To you who know him so well, who have studied 
the man and the poet, I need not illustrate his little ec- 
centricities in this regard. What poet was ever free from 
them ? Who among ourselves is without them ? Nor is 
this feature in the laureate — or, for that matter, in any 
poet — to be wondered at. Tennyson would seem to be 
determined on becoming not only a poet but a recluse 
as well. Why, we can not say. His great models were 
not recluses. Horace was what we may now call a "jolly 
fellow." He joked on the Via Sacra, and drank the gen- 



THE LATE POET-LAUREATE. 



183 



erous Falernian with confreres genial in wit and poesy. 
Keats was kindly-hearted and social ; Shelley was con- 
vivial ; Byron, until his last years, was more than con- 
vivial ; the Windermere poets were envied for the do- 
mestic bliss they enjoyed ; and even hard-working old 
Walter Scott delighted in such sturdy scenes of mirth as 
make Dean Ramsey's Reminiscences of Scottish Life such 
exquisite reading. Still, Tennyson, somehow, was a kind 
of harmless misanthrope; cooping himself in, when he 
was at home, and preferring lonely haunts, wild coasts, 
and sandy solitudes when he went out for his daily walks. 
Who knows ? — if matters were otherwise, we might have 
never read In Memoriam, and dear little Break, Break, 
might never have been heard on the stages of our infant 
schoolrooms. Who knows ? 

But it is time for us to come to this same In Memo- 
riam ; and we now regret that this one collection — for it 
is a kind of continued collection — was not the sole sub- 
ject of our little Tennysonian reverie to-day. In Memo- 
riam — oh, we can not do it anything like justice. View it 
as a poem, a sermon, a romance, a dirge, a reverie, we 
can not face it in any phase and treat it briefly. 

Have you heard that no great literary work ever 
appeared anonymously, but was soon claimed by some 
pseudo-author ? This is not quite true. At all events, 
In Memoriam is an exception. The sanctuary Tennyson 
created was too hallowed for any spurious intruder to 
enter. And though, in these one hundred and thirty 
cantos, the sameness of versification and the continua- 
tion of melancholy thought would seem to involve mo- 
notony and beget tedium, who ever, I ask, grew weary of 
reading them ? The reader may close the book for the 
hour or the call of duty, but has he not ever watched the 
first opportunity in the trend of the day's toil to return 



THE LATE POET-LAUREATE. 



with new enthusiasm, and dream or mourn or weep ? — 
yea, or sing of the lost one : 

I hear thee where the waters run ; 
Thou standest in the rising sun, 
And in the setting thou art fair." 

Or to the precious freighted ship : 

"All night no ruder air perplex 

Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright 
As our pure love, through early light 
Shall glimmer on the dewy decks." 

Then— 

** The Danube to the Severn gave 

The darkened heart that beats no more ; 
They laid him by the pleasant shore, 
And in the hearing of the wave." 

And then the boding of the poet's own death : 

And think that, somewhere in the waste, 
The shadow sits and waits for me." 

But with the genial season, so suggestive to-day, he sings 
the dirge of the old year and the advent of the new : 

*' Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky," etc. 

In Memoriam is a poem of moods, stretching across 
years in the poet's life. From a religious standpoint it is 
a poem of hope, but not of settled faith or Christian con- 
fidence. And yet, if we take a retrospective view of this 
man's life, especially as shadowed in In Memoriam, we 
must conclude that he was a power for good. His poetry 
is sweet to the taste after reading De Musset, Shelley, or 
Hugo. He saw, beyond the clouds that veil the light, the 
promise of a glorious day, though he called himself 

An infant crying in the night. 
An infant crying for the light, 
And with no language but a cry." 



THE LATE POET-LAUREATE. 



185 



He was no visionary, no pantheistic speculator. A 
man of modern science, he saw in every phase of progress 
bright promises for the future of humanity. In his theory, 
perfection and bliss were to be secured not by any tre- 
mendous upheaval of the social sea, not by any sudden 
cataclysm achieved by an upstart leader or adventurous 
parvenu^ but by gradual stages in the law of progress and 
natural development ; until at last shall dawn that millen- 
nium era of human existence, when 

" The war-drum throbs no longer, and the battle-flags are furled, 
In the parliament of men, the federation of the world." 

My dear friends, let all God's creatures, and all the 
thoughts and words of God's creatures, bring us nearer 
to God ; so that each of us may sing, at life's twilight, 
even more confidently than the confident Laureate : 

" For though from out our bourn of time and place 
The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
When I have crossed the bar." 

And from every broad Christian heart, hopeful of God*s 
mercy, echoes a great Amen. 



13 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



Delivered at St, James s Hall, Buffalo, JV, V, 

The influence of the Catholic Church on The Fine 
Arts" — on painting, music, and architecture — is the subject 
of our discourse this evening. Our aim will be to prove to 
you that this influence has ever been a salutary one ; that 
the Church has ever kept alive in men's souls the idea and 
the love of the beautiful, the sublime, the heavenly ; that 
she gathered together the distracted elements of ancient 
art and reproduced them in more than pristine splendor ; 
that in the day of danger, when Gaul, and Goth and Van- 
dal threatened to desecrate and to destroy, she closeted 
her treasures in the cells of her monasteries, and thence 
poured them out upon a darkened world, to guide it and 
to teach. 

Our theme will lead us into distant lands, and back 
among the mists of early history. It will speak to us of 
the painter's pencil, of music's charm, of architecture's 
grace and beauty. It will tell us that the Church, lover of 
men and anxious of man's eternal future, cultivated the 
arts in order to captivate men's souls and lead them to 
God ; and that from the poet's pen, or the painter's pencil, 
or the sculptor's grace, she was ever pointing upward to 
the Home where beauty never fades and hope shall not 
deceive. 

We can not wonder, then, that the Church was ever 
the zealous guardian of the arts, seeing that her mission 
was to gain souls to God. Thus, in order to win man to her 

(i86) 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



187 



she must take him as he is, with his weaknesses and his 
likings, leading him from the natural to the supernatural, 
from the sense to the spirit, from the " things that are 
made to the invisible things of God." Therefore she 
takes hold of these things men love — of the beautiful and 
the lovely — and makes them her handmaids in her mighty 
work. Hence the rapturous music, the exquisite paint- 
ings, the lofty dome, the graceful arch, the breathing 
statue. Hence the Church, true to her mission, has ever 
loved the arts, because they ennobled, instructed, touched, 
captivated men, and, giving them a love for the beautiful 
below, gave them a desire to taste of the eternally beauti- 
ful in heaven. 

And here you must bear in mind, my friends, that 
there is a great difference between Science and Art — two 
things frequently misunderstood in their mutual relations. 
It will not be necessary here to note the difference, as it 
would be if we were treating of art specifically. We are 
simply treating what we call the Fine Arts, the meaning 
of which we shall presently explain. It is sufficient to 
say here, with regard to the difference between art and 
science, that science is mere inquiry for the sake of knowl- 
edge, while art is the production in outward form of that 
knowledge. The perfection of science is in the accuracy 
of the knowledge; the perfection of art is in the beauty 
of the production. 

Now, what are the fine arts " ? 

You know, my friends, that there is art in everything 
around us — art by which we labor, by which we provide 
the necessaries of life, by which we manage to support 
ourselves and live. These are not fine arts. These arts 
are necessary for our existence. We could not live with- 
out the arts that bring us food and clothing. 

But there are arts which are not necessary for our 



i88 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



existence, but which we cultivate out of sheer love for 
their beauty, because they please us, elevate us, capti- 
vate our senses and delight our imagination. These are 
called ^' the fine arts/' We can live without them ; they 
are a luxury. We could live without seeing a beautiful 
picture, or statue, or hearing some delightful melody. 
But, ah ! man's heart yearns for the beautiful. He longs 
to feast his eyes on some lovely sight. He loves to 
float his imagination on the sweet tide of poetry, or to 
soothe his troubled feelings in the balm of music's 
breath ; or yet to scale with his eyes the heights of some 
pinnacled edifice w^hose cross-crowned spire is lost in 
the clouds of heaven. And who will say that he is not 
all the m.ore noble and unearthly for this ? Who would 
not welcome the feeling that makes the heart exult as 
we read some thrilling poem telling the story of hero- 
ism, of religion, or of love of country ? Who is it that is 
not softened into tears of sorrow or of joy as the mourn- 
ful or joyous strains of some old favorite song come 
rushing into our souls, playing upon the chords of our 
willing hearts ? Do we not live in the light of other 
days," when we look with the eyes of religion's beauty 
upon some grand old abbey, ruined and ivy-clad, on the 
verdant bank of a lordly river ? Where is the child of 
feeling that would not treasure the saddening memories 
of the hour when he stood beneath the vaulted arch of 
some time-honored cloister, and looked up to the lance- 
shaped windows, and away into the hallowed sanctuary 
where saints were wont to pray, while the long-drawn 
aisles resounded with the dear old music of monastic 
song? These are the memories which the liberal or fine 
arts promote and cherish in our souls. These arts we 
shall reduce, for the sake of brevity, to three — viz., paint- 
ing, music, and architecture. 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



/. PAINTING. 

The history of Christianity is, to a great extent, the 
history of Painting. If painting did not exactly spring 
up with the Church, it grew with its growth, was encour- 
aged by its patronage, was blessed with its blessing, and 
was grandest when the Church was mightiest. The Church 
was its guardian, its fosterer, its guide, its inspiration ; 
and more — it was its grandest exemplar, for it furnished 
the art with subjects of heaven's history and earth's re- 
demption. 

In the very first centuries of the Church sketches and 
images were rudely cut on the walls of the Catacombs. 
In the days of persecution the picture of a fish was found 
in every quarter v/here the Christian name was reverenced. 
This picture of a fish was then the mark of the Christian 
— the sign by which his fellow-Christian knew him as such; 
for each letter in the Greek word l^v^ (fish) gave the 
initials of the Man-God's name and the divinity of his na- 
ture — "Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Saviour." 

Slow and unimportant was the progress of the art till 
the Church gained her freedom — till the night of persecu- 
tion passed. Then painters were numbered among the 
most honorable of honored men. They were exempted 
by Christian emperors from paying public taxes. They 
were praised by the fathers of the Church. Painters," 
said St. Basil, " accomplish as much by their pictures as 
orators by their eloquence " ; and St. Gregory says of a 
picture that represented the sacrifice of Abraham, " I fre- 
quently gazed at the figure, and could not pass it without 
shedding tears, as it placed the whole story before my 
eyes in the most lively manner." Eusebius, who lived in 
the time of Constantine, tells us that pictures of Christ 
the Redeemer were then common. About this time 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



pictures were introduced into churches — first into the 
churches of Palestine; and so the art was becoming 
gradually more perfect. Figures of Christ and the apos- 
tles assumed an appearance in keeping with the idea men 
had of a Man-God or of an apostle. Old figures, which, 
but for the keys or the sword, might as well represent 
Pilate as Peter, now assumed the simple dignity in keep- 
ing with the idea and the character of the first head of 
the Church. The pictures of the Madonna began to as- 
sume a queenly sweetness and a heavenly grace. And 
this perfection was needed at a time when there was no 
printing, no printed books — when paintings to a great ex- 
tent represented the place of books, and picture galleries 
served the purpose of libraries. To be sure, there were 
manuscripts written on leather and parchment, but the 
common people did not see one of these in a lifetime; nor 
could they decipher them. It was about this time that the 
monks in a college at Constantinople preserved from the 
fury of the iconoclasts the dragon's skin, one hundred 
and twenty feet long, on which were written, in letters of 
gold, the entire works of Homer. 

And so the art went on, until great lights sprang up in 
the Church — men of science, and lovers of art ; popes of 
mighty genius, filled with zeal for the glory of God and 
for the encouragement of everything that could raise 
men's minds from earthly things to the contemplation of 
eternal beauty. In the cloisters of the monasteries were 
men whose talents, unclouded by the world's folly, achieved 
great things for the arts, for religion, and for God. Then 
burst upon the world the glory of those works of painting 
which now fill the museums, galleries, and churches of this 
whole globe. Then came to light and into immortality 
those inimitable illustrations of the Annunciation, the 
Nativity, the Virgin and Child, the Crowning with Thorns, 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 191 

the Crucifixion, the Taking down from the Cross, the 
Women at the Tomb, and the Mission of the Apostles — 
paintings which our greatest artists will spend a lifetime 
in copying, satisfied with even an imperfect success. Then 
came from the brush of a Dominican monk, surnamed 
The Angelic Painter," all the great mysteries of our 
faith, rich in color, and richer yet in the truthful imagery 
of heaven. His saints and angels were so lifelike, so full 
of the grace of heaven, and surrounded by so celestial an 
atmosphere, that Michael Angelo, kneeling before them 
one day in rapture, exclaimed, The man that could have 
painted these must have seen them in heaven ! " 

Then come a host of painters whose genius and bril- 
liancy of conception fairly dazzle us — Cimabue, Giotto, 
Guido, Titian, Fra Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, Michael 
Angelo, Raphael, Domenichino, Correggio, and others. 
These were all most faithful children of the Church, some 
of them monks of austere orders — all men of virtue, 
faith, and piety. That they were eminently Christian 
men will be seen from a few instances. Some of them 
would not place brush to canvas on a day they had not 
received the most Adorable Sacrament ; others never be- 
gan without prayer and meditation. They were men of 
stainless character, and they generally knelt at their sa- 
cred work. When depicting our Dolorous Mother or our 
Suffering Redeemer, their eyes were seldom tearless ; and 
their work was all the grander because their pure souls 
were filled with its sublime significance. And thus, the 
painter and the purpose ennobling the work, who could 
wonder that the result had a touch of heaven about it ? 
A good man naturally speaks good and moral things ; the 
wicked man, evil. The well-ordered stomach gives out a 
pure breath, while the unhealthy system exhales a fetid 
current. So with the painter. The mind filled with the 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



contemplation of heavenly beauty, throws itself in all the 
purity of its conception upon the dead canvas, and lives 
and breathes and teaches there. No wonder, then, that 
Michael Angelo exclaimed, on another occasion, that the 
gates Ghiberti carved at Florence were worthy to be gates 
of paradise. 

Why speak any longer on this matter ? The grandest 
works of the greatest painters are works of religion by 
Catholic masters. The world is full of the works, and 
genius worships the workers. Religion was their guide ; 
beauty their theme; the Church their mother; heaven 
their hope and their reward. The best works of Da 
Vinci, Raphael, and Angelo were on themes inspired by 
the Church. The Last Supper, by Da Vinci, is his crown- 
ing achievement. Raphael's Madonnas will be ever the 
admiration of the world of art; and not so much the love- 
liness of the face as the holiness of the spirit gives them 
immortality. The Last Judgment and the Dome of St. 
Peter's are the master works of Angelo. Oh, that Last 
Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel at Rome ! Who can look 
at it and not feel that the hand of an angry God is sweep- 
ing over him ? These men prayed ; they felt what they 
painted, and in the ardor of their inspiration they seemed 
to have dipped their pencils in the colors of heaven. 

But ah ! Protestantism came, and with it what a 
change! It would take away the celestial and the un- 
fading from the beautiful art. Even Rubens, a pious 
Catholic, imbued with the growing spirit, lent a gross 
beauty to his pictures of the Virgin. The votaries of 
Protestantism loved the arts; but oh! the beautiful — the 
eternally beautiful — sank so much within them, that the 
portraiture of earthly things and sinful became the ob- 
jects of their pencil's ambition. And how could it be 
otherwise, in a religion which professed to see in images 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



nothing but idols; in pictures of Christ and the apostles 
nothing but profanity and superstition ? Then the beauty 
of painting disappeared. Divine themes no longer met 
the eye, and spoke to the soul of the things above — of 
the God who loves us. No ; the new ambition was to 
paint a landscape true to Nature, to catch the nearest 
flesh tint, and to paint the soulless beast. The Round- 
heads in England were not satisfied with the downfall of 
a throne, with the extinction of the Stuarts, nor with the 
proscription of their religion. No ; the men who followed 
Cromwell were iconoclasts of the first order. They fired 
the churches, shattered the statues, and tore to pieces the 
pictures of the Madonna and the martyrs. They banished 
the Church, and seemed bound to send the arts to keep it 
company. They succeeded but too well. Puritan hatred 
of pictures struck a blow at art from which it did not re- 
cover for three reigns. Sir Joshua Reynolds in part re- 
vived the art, but it is only in portraiture and landscape 
that the English school exists to-day. And England de- 
plores it. She feels, too, that the cause of the decline 
is to be traced to the absence of religious inspiration. 
Nothing great could come, for art and religion were di- 
vorced — the child from the mother, the pupil from the 
teacher. Their greatest men confess to-day that the 
rudest art must be spiritual — must be caught from above. 
But the Church of God gave the themes, inspired, taught, 
encouraged ; and the result is those sublime works which 
will be the admired of admiring peoples till history, time, 
and fame shall be no more. Such, briefly, has been the 
influence of the Catholic Church on Painting. 

//. MUSIC, 

If the Catholic Church nursed the art of Painting, and 
held up its masters as the highest benefactors ; if painting 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



represented on canvas her glories and her sorrows, music — 
lovely creature of heaven !— noted down her hymns, sang 
her glories, and filled with the love of the beautiful the 
hearts of her rudest children. 

It has been justly said that music had no mortal artist 
for its inventor; it was implanted in man's nature by the 
Divine Artist himself. It comes home directly to every 
heart. The uncultivated rustic who would feel less pleas- 
ure in contemplating the Apollo of Belvedere than in gaz- 
ing at one of the coarse plaster-of-Paris figures hawked 
through the streets of our cities, and would turn away 
from one of Titian's finest paintings to admire some flar- 
ing sign over a country inn, is alive to the tones of music, 
and loves them and is affected by them. The influence of 
music begins at the cradle and ends only at the grave; 
and so much do we prize it that we make it part of the en- 
joyment of heaven. There is a sweet harmony even in 
inanimate Nature — the measured flow of the water, the 
regular rushing of the tide, the wintry gust sighing through 
the woods, or the summer breeze rustling the leaves — the 
echoes from rock to glen, dying away amid the hill-tops — 
which gives the listener a feeling that he is admitted to a 
communion with the unseen world. 

Now, music is the handmaid of religion. It assists her 
in her work of civilizing rude spirits, soothing the afflicted, 
and bringing hope to the despairing. And religion teaches 
music how to do this. It is natural religion combined with 
revealed that sings the mother's lullaby at the cradle-side, 
the lament at the bed of affliction, the psalm at early 
morn and noontide hour and evening vigil in the choir 
of the recluse. It is religion that speaks to our souls in 
the tone of the organ, king of instruments, at the daily 
immolation of the Man-God and in his Church's vesper 
hymn. 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



And here you will permit me to make a slight digres- 
sion, while I ask you to admit that music has a power 
over the human heart. It is employed in the battlefield 
to inspire intrepidity, in the banquet hall to promote good 
feeling, in the prayer hall to assist devotion. It calls up 
varied emotions according as its tones accompany the 
wedding or the funeral. And who will blame us if our 
hearts are softened when we hear the strains of some 
favorite old air, in ballad or in psalmody ? We heard it 
long ago, perhaps, from the maid that was milking the 
cow, or from the man that followed the plow, or yet from 
the mother at the cradle of a restless babe ? And when 
we hear it now for the first time in years and years, we 
can not resist — and we would not if we could — the sweet 
melancholy that comes in to fill our hearts. How sweetly 
Moore sings : 

" When through life unblest we rove, 

Loshig all that made life dear, 
Should some notes we used to love 

In days of childhood meet our ear, 
Oh, how welcome breathes the strain. 

Waking thoughts that long had slept. 
Kindling former smiles again 

In faded eyes that long had wept ! " 

You remember the story of Napoleon and the Swiss 
regiment in his service. He forbade, under penalty of 
death, any soldier to sing the Swiss song known as the 
Rans des Vaches. It was the milk-maid song of the 
Swiss, and it made the soldiers homesick ; and whenever 
they heard it they either deserted or committed suicide. 
So Bonaparte forbade the song. Oh, power of native 
music ! 

Now, what has the Catholic Church done for music ? 
The Catholic Church, seeing that music had such a power 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



over human hearts, took every means possible to elevate 
the art and wed it closely with religion. To this work she 
applied herself early and long. Catching up what she 
could of the traditional music of the Psalms and of Jere- 
mias (it was merely traditional, as there was no such thing 
as written music, except in crude Oriental " cyphers "), she 
placed it in her liturgies, sang it in her public offices, and 
scattered its beauties to the four winds of heaven. Where^ 
the Church went, music followed ; and where music was 
prized there the Church had a power over men's hearts; 
and the more she loved her children and their eternal wel- 
fare, the more she cultivated the soul-speaking art of music. 

We are not surprised, then, when we find that the 
Church had a fixed form of music as early as the time of 
St. Ambrose. Of the Ambrosian chant St. Augustine 
wrote, ^^As the voices floated into my ears, truth was 
instilled into my heart, and the affections of piety over- 
flowed in tears of joy.'* It is said that St. Ambrose com- 
posed the Te Deum on the conversion of St. Augustine.. 
Then came the mighty Gregory, father of Church music, 
bringing us a gift never to be too highly prized — viz., the 
Gregorian Chant, mild, pure, severe, and solemn. It is 
called " plain chant." We hear it in Holy Week, and in 
some places it is sung by the entire congregation. 

The Church has all the glory of the next achievement 
in the art. From the hands of a Benedictine monk came 
forth the first organ. It was presented to King Pepin in 
the year 757. And the Church thanked God for the instru- 
ment that inspires devotion, that arrests the distracting 
thoughts of a whole congregation and turns them into one 
stream of harmonious prayer, till, forgetful of cares and 
miseries and self, they are absorbed in the thought of 
the all-seeing God. To another child of St. Benedict, 
Guido by name, we owe the musical scale, used all the 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



world over since his time* {Ut^ re^ mi, etc., Hymn of St. 
John the Baptist, Ut qiieant laxis, etc.) ; while Odington, 
yet another son of Benedict, in the thirteenth century wrote 
a treatise on the theory of music. Development after de- 
velopment followed, counterpoint, figure, and laws came 
in to complete the art, till all the glory of music culmi- 
nated on the heads of Palestrina, Haydn, Mozart, and 
Rossini — children of faith and of the Church, names to be 
honored when prmces are forgotten. To-day, to write 
the history of Catholic composers would be to write the 
history of modern music. 

An abuse then began to creep in. Lofty composers, 
forgetful of their sacred duty, wrote music which was any- 
thing but devotional — aimed only at displaying their power 
and their brilliancy. The result was a musical repertory 
unfit for Church service. Pope Marcellus was just about 
to banish all music but Gregorian, when Palestrina came 
to the rescue. He composed a Mass which displayed 
solemnity and inspired devotion ; and thus the Church, 
mother of music, saved the art from degradation. Our 
music to-day embodies the genius of three centuries, and 
will be heard with rapture when the finest lyric dramas 
shall be forgotten. 



* The monosyllables are taken from the first stanza in the hymn of 
St. John the Baptist (June 24), thus : 

*' Ut queant laxis, 
i?^-sonare fibris, 
Mi'Xd. justorum 
i'a-muli tuorum 
So loe reati 
La bii salutis, 
Sa-TioXo. Joannes." 

The French school early in this century changed tit into do, the latter 
being a more open sound. Sa and si have become convertible. 



igS THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



It is admitted that the composition of Church music 
developed to a wonderful extent the musical genius of the 
composers. Nay, more : Mozart seems to have taken the 
tone of his musical greatness from listening one day in 
Holy Week to the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel at Rome. 
At the singing of this dread strain pontiff and cardinals 
kneel around the great altar, the church is darkened, and 
the voices die away in a high tenor, with ravishing effect. 
Mozart heard it twice, and, rushing out of the temple, re- 
produced it note for note. It is said that the effect of 
this Miserere upon him may be traced in all his works. 

Haydn was a child of the Church, and his piety lent the 
highest inspiration to his genius. He never began a score 
without writing at the top of the page, " Soli Deo Gloria,'* 
and at the end, " Laus Deo." When composing, if his im- 
agination failed him, he repeated his rosary; and he never 
began a work without a prayer for due inspiration, asking 
of God the power to praise Him worthily. 

But we can not here enumerate the authors who have 
been educated under the wing of the Church, patronized 
by Roman oratories, and nursed at the courts of the pon- 
tiffs. It would be vain and futile to try it. But we 
fearlessly say, music is an art if not born, certainly ma- 
tured in the Church. We do not so much claim this for 
painting and sculpture, though the Catholic Church re- 
fined and elevated them. Bat music is the child of the 
Catholic Church. That Church has ever been its noble 
protectress, its highest inspiration. 

Oh, yes, my friends, majestic and venerable stands the 
Church of Rome ! In her service peals forth the grandest 
of earth's music, worthy to be of angels heard. For her 
the Muses have forsaken the summits of Parnassus; to 
her the musician has ever dedicated his genius. She has 
given his noblest works to her poorest worshipers in every 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



land, and repaid the masters with perpetual remembrance 
and universal fame. Far as her realm extends are known 
the glories of Mozart and Beethoven, Haydn and Rossini. 
Let us hope that now their voices blend with the per- 
petual song of angels in heaven ! 

///. ARCHITECTURE, 

The influence of the Catholic Church on Architecture 
has been marvelous. It is true the ancients excelled in 
architecture; but it was a low, groveling kind of archi- 
tecture — of thick, massive pillars and shapeless roof, dis- 
playing an animal, brute kind of beauty, of which we must 
admire the bulk and extent rather than the symmetry or 
proportion. It was the aim and province of the Catholic 
Church to catch up all the nobler elements of ancient 
architectural beauty, and blend them with her own heaven- 
inspired ideas into a grand and towering edifice, worthy of 
God and inspiring to men. She would build her churches 
high and tapering ; small window over large, and turret 
over pillar, and spire over all, holding up a cloud-reach- 
ing cross ; and this style of architecture she would call 
Gothic. 

There are many orders or styles of architecture. We 
shall allude to three — the Doric, the Corinthian, and the 
Gothic. We mention the Doric simply because it is ad- 
mittedly the oldest of the orders. Indeed, we shall not 
say much of any other than the Gothic, for the reason 
that most of the other orders were developed before the 
time of the Church, and therefore are not exactly within 
our scope. 

The Doric order had its birth in Athens. Liberty, 
love of country, and ambition had made that city the 
common center of science and of art. The peace which 
followed on the victory of Marathon had been most favor- 



200 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



able to the culture of the country, moral and physical. 
There was a brilliant display of rare talent at the time. 
Philosophy, eloquence, military art, and architectural prog- 
ress conspired to give luster to the epoch. The chisel of 
Phidias was employed, and the Greeks began the rebuild- 
ing of the edifices and temples that had been destroyed 
during the war with the Persians. To this epoch we owe 
nearly all that we have of ancient Doric architecture, 
pure, sublime, immortal, exhibiting a perfection which 
has never been approached by modern art, and which will 
scarcely ever be surpassed. This was the parent age of 
Doric and, indeed, of all architecture. 

Next came the Ionic, then the Corinthian, now so 
common. The Corinthian is a charming order of archi- 
tecture. You all know its beautiful pillar with the acan- 
thus leaves at the top. Doubtless, too, you have heard 
the little story of its origin. It is this : A Corinthian vir- 
gin fell a victim to a disease and died. Her nurse, col- 
lecting those articles which the girl most loved in life, 
placed the basket on the grave and covered it with a 
square slate or tile. The basket was accidentally placed 
on the top of an acanthus plant, which, pressed by the 
weight, shot forth its stem and foliage, and, growing up 
to the angles of the slab, turned down its leaves in beau- 
tiful volutes. An artist, passing by, observed the basket, 
and the delicacy of the foliage around it. Pleased with 
the sight, he took out his pencil, and the first Corinthian 
column was the result. You see this clearly. Imagine a 
basket, half-oval in shape — a waste-basket, for instance — 
standing on a grave. The leaves of a beautiful plant are 
creeping up around it. Lay on the basket a tile or light 
slab of marble ; the leaves turn outward when they meet 
the hindrance. This picture in marble is the characteristic 
head or capital of the Corinthian pillar. Enough ! Let - 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 20 1 

US go to the Gothic order; it is grander, purer, and nearer 
to our Catholic hearts. 

To seek the origin of all architecture would be as 
absurd as a search would be after the primitive language. 
It was different in different countries. It sprang as well 
from the huts of Greece as from the subterranean ex- 
cavations of Egypt or the tents of Asia. Every country 
had its style of building ; and while the Romans were 
erecting the Coliseum after one set of principles, the 
Chinese were building temples to the sun after a totally 
opposite ideal. 

The origin of the Gothic is variously explained. That 
it is a distant imitation of the woods and forests, however, 
seems to be no mere myth. The man who built the first 
hut of branches meeting each other in leaves at the top, 
and having a pointed or tapering doorway, was the first 
Gothic architect. 

To explain. Gothic architecture had its founders in 
the children of the forest. It is a rough imitation of their 
sylvan home. Thus, look up through the long aisles of 
a Gothic cathedral, among the many pillars, and you are 
reminded of a grove of trees with naked trunks. Here 
you have an idea of the Gothic type of architecture. 

Now, imagine you are in an avenue of lofty trees, 
whose trunks stand pillarlike at each side as you go. 
You are in the middle aisle of one of Nature's Gothic 
churches. Look up, and see the branches meeting and 
intertwining over your head, forming a beautiful arch, a 
roof of foliage. You have the true idea of a purely 
Gothic church. For proof of this, go into an old quaint 
French church and see the gnarled pillars, meeting above 
in shafts like tree-branches, and spreading around the 
roof in exquisitely carved foliage of grand old black oak. 
You are in a Gothic church. Outside it is a very forest 
14 



202 THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



of buttresses, turrets, and statues ; and the queen-tree of 
the forest, the spire ; and then the guardian of the forest, 
the little, slender, highest, proudest, noblest stem — the 
cross of Jesus Christ, God and man ! 

The architects of these grand old edifices were all 
monks. Go and find out, if you can, who was the archi- 
tect of Westminster Abbey ; of the other minsters through- 
out England; of St. Patrick's, Dublin, now Protestant. 
You can not. No one knows. They were monks whose 
fame was buried with them. Their names are known only 
to God. 

This Gothic, the most beautiful and soul-inspiring of 
the orders, is the creature and child of the Catholic 
Church. She would not have the old orders ; she would 
not imitate the architecture that sought only to cover the 
largest possible area of ground and keep the building low 
and earthly. No ; she would rear a monument to the 
living God, a temple high and heavenly, revealing the 
idea of divinity in its every detail ; revealing the aspira- 
tions, holy and eternal, of the regenerated Christian men 
worshiping within. She would have the whole work speak 
to the soul and point to heaven. She would have a tall, 
graceful pillar. She would make the walls speak the gos- 
pel, and the niches hold saints and angels teaching lessons 
of sanctity. She would give a lovely face to the edifice 
outside; and inside, a tongue of sweetest sound, to call 
the faithful to God, and to fling out upon the air intelli- 
gence of Christian joy or divine mourning. And, above 
all, she would rear a lofty spire — slender, pointed, and 
graceful ; and on it she would place, as near heaven as 
possible, the symbol of Christian redemption. 

This architecture was the idea of the Church, her 
child, her nursling — and how truly grand it became ! Oh, 
the marvels of Gothic architectural beauty the world 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



203 



over ! The noble glories of Rome, the wonder of Milan, 
the grace of the Florentine cathedral, the beauties of 
faithful France, of St. Paul's, London, the ivied ruins, 
grand and beautiful even in their widowhood, of a little 
land dear to us all to-night ! Oh, that we had time to 
trace the architectural beauties of the world ; to trace 
them even in their ruins ; to cherish the memories they 
would bring to our hearts ! Ah, we have no ruins in this 
infant Western land, and therefore can not conceive the 
feeling produced in the soul by a fond look upon the 
time-honored ruins of some ancient cloister, or ivied wall, 
or muUioned window, through which the mournful wind 
goes whistlmg the sad story of centuries ! No. 

We shall satisfy ourselves with a few words on the 
Roman architecture of the present day ; and, turning to 
Rome, we are forced to exclaim with a man who had 
much less of religion in his heart than of poetry : 

** O Rome, my country, city of the soul !• 
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, 
Lone mother of dead empire V 

To a Catholic, St. Peter's is the one grand object of 
architectural interest. St. Peter's ! the marvel of the 
world, worthiest temple of the living God — " eternal ark 
of worship undefiled ! " You stand out before it, and you 
are amazed ; but whether at its size, its height, its grand- 
eur, or its memories, you know not. Twice the size of the 
mighty Capitol at Washington, it is nearly twice as high, 
and fully twenty times as grand. But stand on the top 
of the wondrous palisade of steps, and, with all the glories 
of the mighty shrine crowding down upon your memory — 

" Enter. Its grandeur overwhelms thee not ; 
And why ? It is not lessened, but thy mind, 
Expanded by the genius of the spot, 
Has grown colossal, and can only find 



204 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTa 



A fit abode wherein appear inshrined 
Thy hopes of immortality ; and thou 
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined, 
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now 
His holy of holies, nor be blasted by his brow." 

Yes, enter. You are at a loss what to admire first — the 
wondrous length, the awe-inspiring height, the colossal 
pillars, the mighty mosaics, the bronze tombs of the 
popes, the lifelike frescoes, the lamp-adorned shrines, the 
marble chapels at each side. Look up away through that 
aisle, nearly three American city blocks in length. Men 
are walking there, but they are very pygmies in size. Sur- 
rounded by prodigious statuary and mighty figures in mo- 
saic, and lost in the vastness around, they look very much 
smaller than they would at the same distance in the open 
air. The statues of children holding holy-water vases are 
larger than the giants of our youthful fancy. But every- 
thing is immense ; all is immensity. Look up to the high- 
est gallery ; few steeples in America could reach it. The 
four pillars round the dome are each two hundred and 
forty feet in circumference ; sixty feet thick ! Only imag- 
ine it — each pillar nearly as wide as this church ! 

But, lo ! the dome, the vast, the wondrous dome ! " 
Oh, who could describe that marvel of art and beauty and 
daring — swung three hundred and twenty-four feet high 
over your head, alive with the breathing figures of Angelo, 
bright with the glare of living mosaics ! But go up to the 
high-perched galleries. You look down upon the tombs 
of Peter and Paul, and of nearly all the popes. You look 
down upon the wonders of art, of painting, and of sculp- 
ture; upon the rarest sight in the world. Ascend higher; 
go around the dome, and into the ball at the top. It will 
hold a dozen persons. Look out upon Rome, "the Niobe 
of nations*'; look out upon the most wistful scene of his- 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



205 



tory, war, and religion on the face of the earth. Look out 
upon the Coliseum, where of old human beings were 
butchered to make a Roman holiday." Roll your eye 
down with the yellow Tiber, and think of its history; and 
see the bridge which Horatius kept in the brave days of 
old." See the broad Campagna, spread with broken arches, 
and shattered pillars, and ruined aqueducts. Pass in view 
the Alban Mountains, the Sabine Hills, till your eye grows 
weary on the blue of the Mediterranean waters. At your 
feet is the city of cities, " the mother of dead empire," 
strewn with columns, arches, and ruined temples that 
knew the noonday of Roman glory, that were old before 
the Caesars came to power. 

But why delay ? Other marvels there are of Gothic 
art at Florence, Milan, Constantinople, Seville, Chartres, 
Poictiers, and Paris. If you wish to know what has been 
the influence of the Catholic Church on architecture, ask 
yourselves, What is the grandest temple of the living God 
to-day ? And your hearts will be your instructors. 

And now, my friends, I have nearly done. Pardon me 
if you perceive, in what I have said, too much of the beau- 
tiful and too little of practical religion, of real life. You 
may think that the Church is extravagant in her Pictures, 
her Music, her Edifices. But you must remember that 
truth can not be too highly adorned ; that religion is a 
sweet poem as well as a true revelation ; that the true and 
the beautiful are one. Imagination and intellect are both 
required in order to grasp the full worth of religion. The 
one deals with beauty, the other with truth. When, there- 
fore, anything comes under both faculties at once, it may 
be at once beautiful and true; and they enjoy only half 
religion's comforts who see its truth and not its beauty. 
There are very many good people in this world who have 
no imagination at all. They see truth without knowing 



2o6 THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



that it is beauty as well. They are very happy and con- 
tented with themselves — God keep them so! But they 
lose much of the happiness of life without feeling the 
loss. 

Yet we would not carry one faculty too far. Too 
much imagination will make us unpleasantly sentimental ; 
too clear a perception may make us unpleasantly harsh. 
But give full play to both, and our vision of Beauty will 
become our most perfect vision of Truth; and our holy 
religion will be at once the highest truth and the sublimest 
poetry. Let us love the beautiful, then, for its own sake, 
and because it is truth, too. To be sure, it is almost use- 
less in a practical age like ours. It will not invent steam 
engines, or settle great questions, or build suspension 
bridges, or start electric cars ; but take away the beautiful 
from our mind, take away the beautiful from religion, and 
what is life, and how cold is worship ! 

Yes, my friends, painting, music, and architecture 
speak to the heart, and it is the Church that makes them 
vocal. Compare the subjects of heathen painting with 
those of the Old or the New Testament, and you at once 
perceive the superiority of the latter. And oh ! the 
Church uses them to this day to teach us. Be forever 
glorified, O religion of Jesus Christ ! that in the courts of 
justice at Paris hast represented the Eternal Judgment 
seat, at the public hospital the Resurrection, and in the 
orphan refuge the Birth of the homeless Saviour." 

And oh, what has she not done for music ? She has 
invented the organ, and given sighs to brass itself. Wher- 
ever she erects her throne there have arisen a people who 
sing as naturally as the birds of the air. She has civilized 
the savage by means of her hymns, and the wild Iroquois, 
who would not submit to her doctrines, was overcome by 
her concerts. She has taught the laboring people of rural 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



207 



congregations to sing the benediction of the blessed sac- 
rament. She has taught the mother at the spinning-wheel 
to sing to her artless little ones the story of the infant 
Jesus. In vain would you seek a sweeter music for song; 
in vain would you seek a religion better adapted to a 
mother's love. 

Architecture is her child. Her churches are her homes, 
and she has erected the noblest on earth. She loves the 
beauty of God's house and the place where his glory 
dwelleth. She has taught her children to love it too, to 
kneel on the grave of their fathers, and pray at the same 
altar and assist at the same sacrifice and adore the same 
God. Does a village hamlet look desolate or unfinished? 
Set up a dome or Gothic spire in its midst, and at once it 
has life and integrity. Oh, that old spire ! It is the funeral 
pyramid round which " the rude forefathers of the hamlet 
sleep." There is the bell that toils when the bride is led 
to the altar, when the body to the grave is borne, when 
the God of glory is being offered up on the altar. And 
heads are bowed in the field of the peasant, and knees are 
bent in prayer, at the sound of the Angelus chime. O 
beautiful, harmonious, love-inspiring religion of Jesus 
Christ! 

Oh, our God is the God of Nature, and this world is 
His cathedral — the highest peaks of craggy mountams His 
spires ; the skies and floating clouds His hanging pictures ; 
the thunder's roar, the ocean's murmur, and the melody 
of the babbling stream His music; while the sun and the 
stars and the moon are the lamps that shine round His 
eternal sanctuary. And we are lovers of Nature and of 
Nature's God. We strive to keep His commands, to save our 
immortal souls. We reflect upon the beauties of art that 
they may lead us to Him, the eternal Beauty, into those 
cathedrals of which He, the Lamb, is the eternal lamp ; to 



208 



THE CHURCH AND THE FINE ARTS. 



hear the music which mortal ear has never heard, to see 
the glories which human eyes have never seen, to drink 
in the torrents of delight which it has never yet entered 
into man's heart to conceive — sounds, sights, delights, 
which our good God has prepared for them that love Him. 



"THE DAY WE CELEBRATE." 



Delivered before the St. Patrick Society, Brooklyn, 

The memories of the day we celebrate recall a mighty 
past. They bring us back to pre-Christian times in a little 
land singularly favored by Heaven ; reminding us, too, that 
the Christian records of the land are unrivaled in the his- 
tory of the Christian faith. It is a land that appeals to 
the admiration and the sympathy of the civilized world. 
Playing a part in human affairs out of all proportion to 
its physical limits and its population, it stands to-day an 
anomaly and a wonder among the countries of this earth. 
Her name is known from the rising to the setting sun. 
Her sons and daughters are all but ubiquitous. She has 
given to civilization some of its brightest ornaments, its 
most quickening elements, its keenest minds. To the 
Church of God in many lands she has given apostolic 
sons, saintly and heroic daughters. In the greatest of 
earth's enterprises her genius and her influence may be 
distinctly traced; and though now old in years, she is 
"young in her hopes of the future/' 

Though — like the Church she loves — she was known 
"before the Saxon set foot in Britain, before the Franks 
had crossed the Rhine," she keeps intelligent pace with 
the highest movements of the nineteenth century. Yes; 
and, with the help of the God of justice, she will soon be 
found to hold her own among the proudest nations of the 
earth. 

Old and checkered, indeed, is the story of this little 

(209) 



210 



''THE DAY WE CELEBRATE." 



land. The Romans called it Hibernia; the Greeks, lerne; 
the Celts have named it Erin. In pre-Christian days its 
religion was a sublime pantheism. The great sun in the 
heavens was the national god, while fire and air and water 
were secondary deities. Its government was tribal, and 
its language, laws, and rites bore the distinctive impress of 
the Orient. The people wrote their language in old East- 
ern characters ; and if Julius Caesar had mvaded the island, 
he would have found, instead of naked, lawless tribes — 
such as he met in Britain — a people of refined Eastern 
cast, governed by their own system of law. 

Such was Ireland when the light of revealed truth rose 
and shone upon her virgin face. The day-star " of faith 
rose upon her, not in storm, but " mildly springing." And 
then she grew into a great Christian, a great scholastic 
nation. She became the Arcadia of the world, the class- 
room of Europe. Her pupils were Picts, Franks, Ger- 
mans, Cimbri, Saxons. They came to sit at the feet of 
scholars, to gather from the lips of saints the divine 
science of the saintly; and they went home to tell of the 
glories of Irish genius, the wisdom and valor of her sons, 
the virtue of her daughters — till all Europe, with one 
voice, proclaimed her the nursery of science and the home 
of the saintly. And thus she continued, for three long 
centuries after her apostle's death, one of the fairest 
lands under heaven. That fair name she ever afterward 
preserved, through good and evil report; through the 
dark night of persecution; through the days when her 
sons were forbidden to explore the domain of science. 
That name she maintained in strange lands, where her 
exiled sons endowed colleges, sat in the chairs of univer- 
sities, adorned with their works monastic libraries, and 
preached the gospel of Jesus Christ; and to-day Irish 
names are found in the calendars of every country on the 



"THE DAY WE CELEBRATE." 



211 



Continent, as founders of churches and pioneers of the 
Christian faith. 

To the restless, destructive Danes this rich little land 
was as a honey-laden flower to the wandering bee. For 
nearly three centuries the people bore with the hostile 
strangers — the nation of pirates. At length the proud 
spirit of the Celt asserted itself ; and Ireland was never 
more truly independent than on the glorious Good Friday 
when Brian Boru, with the sword in one hand and the 
crucifix in the other, purpled the shores of Clontarf and 
the waters of Dublin Bay with the blood of the van- 
quished invaders. 

A century of peace followed. But when Strongbow 
landed on the coast of Wexford, Ireland's death-knell 
began. Yet, as the Normans were co-religionists with 
the people, they made an easy home in the country ; and 
soon the Burkes and Fitzmaurices and Prendergasts be- 
came more national than the natives. It was only with 
the night of religious persecution — a night which saw no 
dawning until 1829 — that the direst history began. Dark 
with crime and dismal with slaughter is the story of that 
weird period in Irish annals. During the reign of the first 
two Stuarts every effort was made to crush the national 
life and the Catholic spirit out of the people. Cromwell 
ravaged the land, sparing neither sex nor age. He made 
a war of avowed extermination. Yet the national spirit 
survived; and when James II made a faint struggle, forty 
thousand men rallied around him in vain. But the repu- 
tation for martial courage — won at Benburb, and lost at 
the Boyne — revived at the gallant defense of Limerick. 
Need I say it was re-established — yea, crystallized — on 
many a foreign field, from Dunkirk to Belgrade " ? Then 
were formed the " old " and the " new " brigades. Blenheim 
in 1704, and Ramillies in 1706, attest the valor of Clare's 



212 



THE DAY WE CELEBRATE." 



dragoons ; and *^ Fontenoy — famed Fontenoy — had been 
a Waterloo, were not these exiles ready then, fresh, vehe- 
ment, and true." 

Thirty years afterward a kind Providence blessed this 
great American land with the sweet sunshine of liberty, 
and Erin's freedom-loving sons instinctively turned to 
the light across the waters. Hither many came in time 
to draw the sword against the hereditary foe. The great 
spirit of liberty was abroad. The shot fired at Lexington 
soon echoed round the world, and Freedom's fight began. 
Grattan, on College Green, was thundering the very prin- 
ciples that Patrick Henry was flinging in the teeth of Vir- 
ginia loyalists. The cause here was successful. A free 
nation arose, and Columbia, with tears of joy in her eyes 
and garments reeking with blood, smiled on an applaud- 
ing world. The struggle in Ireland continued, and is not 
yet over. The people there, and fair minds everywhere, 
are proclaiming that the laws should be made by the peo- 
ple and for the people ; that the land belongs to the people ; 
that Ireland belongs to the Irish. Such are the memories 
involved in the sentiment of " The Day we Celebrate." 

Lord Salisbury has just been telling the world that 
the Irish people were always opposed to English interests 
and English power. They fought against us," he says, 
" when we quarreled with Spain ; they fought against us 
when we quarreled with America ; and they fought against 
us when we quarreled with France." Well, we admit that 
it is a traditional failing with the Irishman to be " agin 
the Government." The Hibernian, we are told, always 
sides with the under dog in the fight. He is naturally a 
rebel. But what of that ? There never would have been 
a salutary revolution were it not for rebels. We have had 
some decent rebels in history, from the Roman Brutus 
down to the American George Washington. 



^'THE DAY WE CELEBRATE." 



213 



" They fought against us in Spain and in France.'* 
Who drove them to it ? " They fought against us in 
America." Ah! if the Salisburys of that day had only lis- 
tened to the voice of statesmen like Edmund Burke, these 
colonies would have been freed without the cost of blood- 
shed. "Give the people of the American colonies," said 
Burke, " a share of those rights which I have always been 
taught to value myself." No, the Irishman is not a rebel, 
except, indeed, in the cause of his own land ; and in this 
sense every patriot is a rebel. And in this sense is not 
every rebel a patriot ? Granted that an insurgent is not 
justified in causing the effusion of blood unless there be 
reasonable prospect of the success of his rebellion. This 
is not only the international, accepted verdict in the 
premises; it is, moreover, the verdict of the wisest and 
most prudent tribunal in the world — the Catholic Church 
of God. 

But does not the noble lord betray ingratitude ? Does 
he not stand very close to the verge of falsehood ? 
Why, the English army and navy have ever had, and have 
to-day, the flower of Ireland's manhood. And it was 
England's misrule that drove the impecunious young 
Irishman to "take the shilling," don the English livery, 
and aid the hereditary foes of his forefathers. How base 
and ungrateful sounds the language of this man — lord 
though he be — when we think of the Irish blood shed in 
British warfare the world over, from W^aterloo to the 
Soudan, in Maoriland and Zululand, from Badajos to 
Delhi ! One of your own eloquent young members re- 
vealed the fact at a recent reunion, when, in a quotation 
from Shell, I think, he told how the blood of England and 
Ireland flowed in the same stream in many of the greatest 
struggles of modern warfare. Has Salisbury lost sight of 
such names as Wellington, Wolseley, Roberts; of oflicers 



214 



"THE DAY WE CELEBRATE." 



by the hundred ; of brave soldiers without number who 
fought and fell upholding the arms of perfidious Al- 
bion"? 

Regarding the little land, to-night we have only to 
say we love her still, dearly, truly. But we must declare 
that while with undivided^ harmonious Ireland, fighting for 
national autonomy, we shall work to the death, to Ireland 
divided^ to disunited nationalism, we owe neither allegiance 
nor one dollar ! 

Yes, the day we celebrate recalls a wondrous past — a 
story written on the tablets of time by the unconquered 
Celt. " We challenge the records of humanity to produce 
a more exalted patriotism. For, notwithstanding the long 
and dreary night of her desolation, Ireland is still a nation, 
and her sons have sworn it, and the great Gladstone has 
declared it," and we know that ere long the good Lord 
Almighty will ratify it before the children of men. 



POLAND: HER WRONGS. 



Delivered at the Polish-Catholic Chu7'ch^ Brooklyn, 

In the heart of the most enlightened continent in the 
world, sheltered on the south by lofty mountains, and 
stretching north and east into undulating plains of un- 
rivaled fertility, watered by generous rivers and enriched 
by beds of rare mineral, is a noble land with a strangely 
interesting history. Historians call it Poland, and the 
natives named it Polska, from the beautifully level nature 
of its surface. To this land our hearts turn in sympathy 
and admiration — in sympathy for its sorrows, and in ad- 
miration for its valor and its virtue. It is the Ireland of 
continental Europe, resembling the Isle of Saints, in that 
it has clung, ever and unswervingly, to the faith of Christ, 
the Church of its fathers. In that land dwell a people 
among the noblest of earth — a people who have sacrificed 
fame, wealth, national pride, yea, national existence, for 
the love of truth, of religion, and of God. To the check- 
ered history of this land I would invite your attention, 
that, having briefly rehearsed it, we may the better realize 
the wrongs, national and religious, that mark the last two 
centuries of her career as a people. 

I. Poland has had a distinct national history since the 
sixth century. About that period two Slavonic tribes, 
ancestors of the present race, united as one, and made 
themselves masters of the land that stretches from the 
Dnieper to the Baltic. They were a race of stalwart, hon- 
est men ; active, ardent, and daring, who, knowing no fear, 

(215) 



2l6 



POLAND : HER WRONGS. 



feared no foe. They settled on the land, and the grate- 
ful soil yielded its fruits into their industrious hands, while 
the generous forests gave up their prey to the lovers of 
the chase. Kings ruled the country, not wisely in some 
instances, but always unselfishly. Then came dawning 
brightly upon them the light of Christian truth, its spirit 
guiding their councils, lending dignity to their actions, 
elevating their lives. Happiness came with plenty, and 
with them it was as with the peasants of Arcadia — the 
richest were poor and the poor lived in abundance." 

As is ever the case in human affairs, however, seeds of 
discord fell on the soil of contentment. There is no rose 
without a hidden thorn. The poor did not long live in 
abundance, for they were degraded by the privileged class 
to the condition of the merest serfs. And here you might 
trace the primary cause of the disasters which have be- 
fallen Poland, one disaster begetting another, till prov- 
ince after province of that ill-fated land fell into the 
hands of neighboring kings, who finally succeeded in blot- 
ting out its limits and its name from the map of Europe. 

Nevertheless, centuries of happy government gave an 
envious name to the land in the middle ages, and her people 
became renowned for their wisdom in council, their fidelity 
to religion, and their matchless valor on the field of battle. 
Poland became a kingdom early in the eleventh century, 
and continued that form of government, with some inter- 
ruptions, until 1772, when the fatal partition took place 
between Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Many noble achieve- 
ments had shed luster on her history, and many a brave 
soldier and wise statesman and saintly bishop illumined 
her name by the glory of their lives. 

There is one page, however, in her history that is black 
with the crime of sacrilege and red with the blood of a 
martyred bishop. On the head of Boleslas II is the guilt, 



POLAND: HER WRONGS. 



217 



for he slew with his own hand and sword, at the very steps 
of God's altar, the noble Stanislaus, Bishop of Cracow. No 
man in the kingdom, save Stanislaus, had the courage to 
remonstrate with the unjust and lustful king. The prelate 
began by mildness, then by the threats which the Church 
keeps in store for peasant and king alike when ill-conduct 
on one hand and the good of the people on the other de- 
mand it. The king would not repent, and the churches of 
the city were placed under an interdict. Then revenge 
entered the breast of the impious monarch. He ordered 
three of his guards to assassinate the prelate. They raised 
their weapons, but could not deal the blows, and they de- 
clared to the king that an unseen influence checked them. 
The king grew impatient, and with one blow of his pon- 
derous weapon martyred the saintly bishop. From that 
day until his death the murderer knew no peace. Excom- 
municated by the Church, he was shunned and hated by 
the people. He fled the land, died in obscurity, and, let 
us hope, penitent. 

Thenceforth matters went along more or less smoothly 
with Poland. Victory crowned her exploits, bravery illu- 
mined her annals, and, though petty jealousies wrought in- 
ternal troubles and weakened the integrity of the king- 
dom, one grand exploit shone out upon her history which 
shed glory on her military name and threw a halo around 
her national existence. In the achievement of that tri- 
umph Poland saved Austria and all Europe, and Sobieski, 
her child, became the hero of Christendom. We refer to 
the deliverance of Vienna in 1683. 

Dark days came again, and Poland's history for the 
century and a half that followed is the story of right 
against might, of the oppressor against the oppressed. 
Austria grew jealous of her, Prussia hated her, Russia 
would annihilate her. Her religion was Catholic, and her 
15 



2l8 



POLAND: HER WRONGS. 



principles were as conservative as her Church. Hence it 
was that political and religious tyranny went hand in hand 
against her, with the result that her territory was alien- 
ated, her faith proscribed, her very language banned and 
forbidden. 

From time to time the people rose in their might; 
with indifferent success, however, for the marshaled 
ranks of three mighty powers combined to suppress them. 
Once, indeed, it did seem that they had conquered. It 
was when the people arose as one man, with Thaddeus 
Kosciusko at their head. He had known the charms of 
liberty, having tasted of them in the great free land of 
the West; and he yearned to secure for his native coun- 
try the blessings he fought to bestow on the stranger. 
Schooled in the military art at Paris and inured to mili- 
tary toil in the struggles of the American Revolution, he 
was eminently fitted and universally chosen to lead his 
fellow-countrymen to victory or to death. Fate, however, 
crowned not the noble enterprise ; and, after a series of 
struggles the noblest in history, Poland, pitied by the 
world, fell, and lost her place among the nations. 

11. Such are the political tribulations from which 
Poland suffered ; but, dire and humiliating as they were, 
compared with the religious persecutions that accompanied 
them, they w^ere trivial indeed. And, after all, dear as 
country is and should be to every true man, what is the 
loss of country to the loss of those sacred rights which 
are the inalienable title of the Christian man ? Take 
away country, home, friends, and everything material, but 
leave me the freedom of my conscience; leave me what I 
have directly from my God, and let me adore that God in 
spirit and in truth — in the all-saving faith of my Re- 
deemer. 

Persecution came on Poland, What was its cause? 



POLAND: HER WRONGS. 



'219 



Ah, what is always its cause ? This : When the law of 
God tells you to do one thing, and you do it, though the 
law of the land tells you to do the contrary, then the law 
of the land persecutes. It persecutes you because you 
have a conscience and make it your guide in certain 
things. Now, the men who frame such laws are anxious 
to aggrandize themselves and their country to the preju- 
dice of God's interests ; or they are cringers to the state, 
and look for promotion as a reward. This is the secret 
of persecution. 

Now, my friends, if despots — despotic kings — had their 
own way, they would destroy liberty of conscience. They 
would take away from men — from you and from me — 
what is not theirs to take away, much less to give. It 
was not they who gave us — you and me — our liberty of 
conscience, our Christian liberty. No; it is not the gift 
of a prince or king at all. It came from a higher power. 
Russia did not give Christian liberty to Poland, though 
she would take it from Poland. England did not give it 
to her sister island, though she had been three centuries 
trying to destroy it or take it away, just as if she had 
given it. No ; it was not the Caesars, but Jesus Christ, 
who said, Go and teach ; " Go and baptize " ; " Go and 
bind, and it will be bound in heaven." It was He told us 
to do it ; and because it was He, we do it at any risk ; and 
because it was no other than He, we would yield the right 
He gave us to no mortal on earth. The despot that comes 
between us is antichristian, a usurper, and a tyrant. We 
derive our liberty not from the Caesars, but from God ; 
and we keep it, guard it, die for it, because it came to us 
from God. They may combine together to oppress ; they 
may call us opprobrious names, or scoff at our unflinch- 
ing earnestness; but we shall continue to do as God has 
commanded us. We shall do it in exile, in prison, in 



220 



POLAND: HER WRONGS. 



chains. And if all the powers of earth unite to scatter 
us or drive us into the bowels of the earth, we shall be 
again the Church of the Catacombs ; but we shall be the 
true Church militant of Christ. Yea, and our last appeal 
shall be to the God of justice, whom we loved and obeyed. 

Poland suffered from a twofold martyrdom — one from 
Prussia, the Protestant, the other from Russia, the schis- 
matic; and to the credit of Protestant Prussia be it said 
that she was much the milder of the two. Hear a few 
instances of Russian tyranny ; and we shall confine our- 
selves to instances that happened within the present 
century. 

In the heat of one persecution a bishop, Siemasko by 
name, fell away. He was rewarded by the Russian Gov- 
ernment with high honors, and many of his people followed 
him. In his diocese was a convent of Basilian nuns, whose 
charity and piety had' endeared them to all the people 
around. These the bishop tempted in vain. He tried 
threats in vain. Grown furious at their refusal, he gave 
them a short time to consider — either to surrender their 
faith or abide the consequences. They concluded to be 
true to Jesus till death. A military guard came to con- 
duct them from the convent. They begged leave to enter 
the chapel and take leave of Jesus in the Blessed Sacra- 
ment. A few minutes spent in prayer, and all arose, save 
one. The Sisters went over to raise her, but she was dead. 
Chained two and two, they were driven, like cattle, fifteen 
leagues on foot — where ? To a convent from which nuns 
had been dislodged, now occupied by women of aban- 
doned character, the widows and wives of Russian sol- 
diers. Here they were subjected to every ignominy. 
They were compelled to break stones, and wheel them 
away in barrows to which they were fastened by chains. 
The women insulted them. Unclean straw was their only 



POLAND: HER WRONGS. 



221 



bed. Their food was execrable. They prayed all night, 
though only one crucifix was left them. They had no 
mass, no priest, no sacraments. Their bodies became cov- 
ered with wounds and sores. They were flogged twice 
a week. Nearly half of them died. Some died during 
the flogging, uttering the name of Jesus. They were 
removed from house to house, each place worse than the 
other. I will not shock you with the details of their 
sufferings. Suffice it to tell that, of forty-three, only 
two escaped to tell the appalling story. The Mother 
was one, and she was commanded to go to Rome and 
write the fearful history and swear to it. The world was 
filled with horror ; and when the Russian Czar paid a 
visit to Pope Gregory XVI, in 1845, he never had a more 
unhappy experience. The interview was strictly private; 
but a great writer of that day tells us that the emperor 
entered the Pope's apartment with all the majestic hau- 
teur of a king, his head erect and his fine military bearing 
displayed to advantage. But it was a noticeable fact in 
the eyes of the beholders that he came out from the man 
of God pale and haggard, and, hurrying away in the most 
unmilitary fashion, slipped into his carriage. The Holy 
Father was asked what he had said to his Majesty. He 
replied, ^^What the Holy Ghost gave me to say." 

What has been the recent religious history of Poland ? 
It is the history of broken promises on the part of the 
Russian Government — of confidence misplaced, of traitors 
selling the innocent. It has been a history of bishops 
deposed, to be succeeded by Greek schismatics ; a history 
of priests dragged away in chains, to perish in the cold 
desert prisons of Siberia or to die of ill-treatment on the 
way, their parishes left in charge of Russian hirelings 
whom the people feared and hated ; and, worst of all, 
intercourse with the Holy See was rendered impossible. 



222 



POLAND: HER WRONGS. 



It has been a history of laymen presiding over the priest- 
hood ; of convents closed, confiscated, burned ; of nuns 
driven out upon the world, insulted, or sent in chains 
to Siberia, whence no word could ever come from them 
again. It has been a history of native language pro- 
scribed ; native manners, affections, virtues, banded as 
criminal. No child must learn its lessons in the Polish 
language to-day. He is not permitted to speak that 
language even in his recreation. He must salute the Rus- 
sians in military style, and clothe himself as a Russian. 
Unless he is acquainted with the Russian tongue he will 
get no employment from the state. The parents must send 
their children to Russian public schools, where every- 
thing Polish is scoffed at. I say must^ for private schools 
and private tutors are prohibited, and it is treason to send 
a child to any foreign school. Two roads through life 
then open for the poor Polish boy — either to enter the 
service of the state and become Russianized, and give up 
the language, customs, and love of his native land, or to 
go home and plot vengeance against the tyrants. This 
is the story of Poland for the last century. How like the 
story of Ireland for the last three centuries ! Oh, no 
wonder that the poor, broken-hearted Polish .patriot should 
exclaim, ^' Is there no hand on high to shield the brave 

Listen to the present Cardinal Archbishop of Cracow, 
and we have done : 

How THE Poles are treated. 

" With regard to the condition of the Poles under the 
three empires to which our nation belongs, here is the 
truth : 

In Austria the Poles are very well treated, having 
all possible liberty, without any restrictions in regard to 
attending to their religious duties. The Polish language 



POLAND: HER WRONGS. 



223 



is taught in the schools, is used in the law courts — is, in 
fact, the official language all over Galicia, and Poles are 
treated on the same terms as other Austrian citizens. Of 
course, for all this we are very grateful to the Emperor 
Francis Joseph. 

" The result is, that among the Austrian Poles there is 
no real party of opposition to the Government. There is 
an opposition party, and a strong one, among the Ru- 
thenians (outside the clergy), but it is mercenary. They 
wish to be annexed to Russia, but they forget how badly 
their brethren in the Muscovite Empire are treated. 

In Galicia, four sevenths of the population are Poles 
and three sevenths Ruthenians. A tenth part of the 
whole population is Jewish, these being settled principally 
in the towns and villages of the east. These last are a 
misfortune to Galicia, being speculators without scruples. 
There are good Jews, but they arc in the minority. 

" In Russia it is quite the contrary. Russians make 
every effort to introduce their religion into Poland, fight- 
ing Catholicism and Catholics in every way and under all 
circumstances. 

" The condition of our poor brethren there is truly 
awful and desperate. What the newspapers have pub- 
lished gives only a faint idea of the terrible reality. The 
most cruel atrocities are committed. Catholics are perse- 
cuted everywhere ; their villages are sacked, and often 
their women are violated under their very eyes. No 
Catholic Pole can have any employment, or buy lands or 
houses, or inherit them, except directly through his father. 
Many priests have been exiled ; almost all the monasteries 
are closed, and those yet open are not allowed to accept 
novices, so they will soon be empty. 

" Still, the Czar is good — a good man, a good husband, 
and a good father, and perhaps he would also be a good 



224 



POLAND: HER WRONGS. 



emperor if he knew the truth. But the truth does not 
reach him. Besides that, he is a fanatic. After having 
miraculously escaped from the last attempt, at Borki, he 
considers himself the man predestined to spread his re- 
ligion all over the world. 

" The position of the Poles in Germany has improved, 
as the teaching of their language is now allowed in the 
schools, and as they have a Catholic authority in the per- 
son of Mgr. Stablewski, Archbishop of Posen and Gnesen. 
Prince Bismarck was very hard upon the Poles and tried 
to Germanize them, and it is only since Count Caprivi 
came to power that they are better treated. Now, in 
Posen, the Poles have complete liberty in religion, with 
the exception that monasteries are not allowed ; but there 
is still a great difference between Posen and Galicia. 

" All over Poland our national feeling is alive and 
strong, and everywhere we are using our best constitu- 
tional efforts to remain Poles and Catholics. But the idea 
of a free Poland is but a dream. A revolution is now im- 
possible in Galicia, because we are so well treated by Aus- 
tria, and in the other two parts because there would be 
no hope of success against Germany and Russia." 

The Poles in this great Western republic enjoy with 
the children of other lands the blessings of freedom, peace 
and religion. And the republic is grateful to Poland. 
Why not ? Her Revolutionary annals are rendered lus- 
trous with the names and deeds of Pulaski and Kosciusko. 
May their compatriots of to-day and their descendants 
prove worthy of the liberties secured to them under the 
Stars and Stripes of Columbia ! 



EUROPEAN CEMETERIES AND THEIR 
ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD. 



Delive7'ed in the Church of The Visitation, Brooklyn, 

To speak of the silent homes of the dead, spread like 
vast cities over the face of Europe ; to place ourselves 
face to face with the still tenants who there have stolen 
to rest, and to give names to the more illustrious, is the 
scope of this discourse. And surely it is a serious and 
wistful subject ; serious from its very nature, wistful in its 
interest — for we all have a strangely keen interest in the 
grave. And why not ? — for the grave is the common 
home of mortality after life has gone; the home of our 
departed friends, the home that awaits every one around 
us, and ourselves. 

I. We begin with the British Isles. In the cemetery 
of Glasnevin, a suburb of Dublin, are some very famous 
graves; and although it is a Catholic burial ground, the 
committee in charge have not imitated the intolerance of 
their neighbors, persons of various creeds having there 
found a last resting place. Close by the eastern entrance 
is the tomb of John Philpot Curran, orator, lawyer, and 
patriot. It was the wish of the dying orator that his re- 
mains might rest in his native soil, and to the Catholics 
redounds the credit of fulfilling the final request of this 
noble heart. As one looks on that tomb, memories come 
up of Curran's daughter Sarah and her ill-fated betrothed 
one, Robert Emmet. Washington Irving has immortalized 
the story in his Broken Heart, and Moore has woven some 

(225) 



226 



EUROPEAN CEMETERIES 



of his most charming poems to perpetuate the saddening 
tale — Oh, breathe not his Name; She is far from the 
Land, and others. 

" The O'Connell Circle " is the center of the cemetery, 
and in it is the great tomb, in the form of a round tower, 
of the Liberator himself. Beside his remains lie those of 
the good priests who were so true to the people during 
the famine of 1847, and whose names have been house- 
hold words in Dublin for more than half a century — Rev. 
Drs. Spratt and Yore and the gentle Fr. Fay. Not far 
away are the tombs of Ireland's two deceased cardinals, 
Cullen and McCabe. Sir John Gray is buried, though 
only temporarily, at the other side ; and as you pass on 
to the east your eyes are attracted by a solitary cross 
with the legend ^' To the Manchester Martyrs." It is a 
cenotaph erected in memory of three men who were ex- 
ecuted in England for what was, many thought, the re- 
sult of an accident. John Martin, Esq., M, P., was the 
chief contributor to its erection. 

Here is the grave of Denis Florence McCarthy, the 
Irish Laureate," and around you on all sides are tombs 
whose inscriptions speak to the heart — graves of martyr, 
patriot, priest: John B. Dillon ; Terence Bellew McManus, 
whose remains were brought from California in 1861 ; Eu- 
gene O'Curry and John O'Donovan, the Celtic scholars; 
Rev. Dr. Cahill ; Hogan, the sculptor ; J. K. Casey, the 
poet of the people, author of The Rising of the Moon; 
and Robert Emmet's faithful servant, Anne Devlin. At a 
little distance, but in an unfrequented part of the ceme- 
tery, where the grass grows rank and high over the 
crowded graves, you read on a plain headstone: Sacred 
to the memory of James Clarence Mangan, who died June 
21, 1849, aged forty-six years. May he rest in peace!" 
How sadly eloquent speaks that simple stone ! Erected 



AND THEIR ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD. 



227 



to the memory of one of Ireland's most gifted sons, it 
looks all the more desolate and isolated in this corner, 
and recalls to one's mind a stanza from his own sad poem 
— Twenty Golden Years Ago : 

" Tic-tic, tic-tic ; not a sound save Time's, 

And the wind-gust as it drives the rain ! 
Tortured torturer of reluctant rhymes. 

Go to bed and rest thy aching brain. 
Sleep — no more the dupe of hopes and schemes — 

Soon thou sleepest where the thistles blow ; 
Curious anti-climax to thy dreams 

Twenty Golden Years Ago." 

And so we leave Glasnevin. Gloomy thoughts and 
saddening flit across our mind as we recall the noble 
thousands who have stolen to rest under Ireland's green 
mantle after lifelong struggles for the welfare and inde- 
pendence of their native land. Ah, *^ bitter," we say, "is 
the patriot's meed." Bitter, we say it is, when we think of 
the brothers Sheares and of Dr. Lucas in the dark vaults of 
St. Michan's Church, and of the unknown grave of Emmet. 
And when we think of the exiled ones who are dropping 
one by one into foreign graves, we realize the desire of 
Thomas Davis to be buried "in an Irish green hillside.'* 
*' Shall they bury me in the deep ? " he asked. 

" Shall they bury me in the deep, 
Where wind-forgetting waters sleep? 
Shall they dig a grave for me 
Under the greenwood tree? 
Or on the wild heath, 
Where the wilder breath 
Of the storm doth blow ? 
Oh, no ! oh, no ! 

*' Shall they bury me in the palace tombs, 
Or under the shade of cathedral domes? 



228 



EUROPEAN CEMETERIES 



Sweet 'twere to lie on Italy's shore ; 
Yet not there — nor in Greece, though I love it more. 
In the wolf or the vulture my grave shall I find ? 
Shall my ashes career on the world-seeing wind ? 
Shall they fling my corpse in the battle mound, 
Where coffinless thousands lie under the ground ? 
Just as they fall they are buried so. 
Oh, no ! oh, no ! 

** No ! on an Irish green hillside, 
On an opening lawn — but not too wide ! 
For I love the drip of the wetted trees — 
I love not the gales, but a gentle breeze, 
To freshen the turf. Put no tombstone there, 
But green sods decked with daisies fair, 
Nor sods too deep ; but so that the dew 
The matted grass-roots may trickle through. 
Be my epitaph writ on my country's mind, 
* He served his country, and loved his kind.' — 

" Oh ! 'twere merry unto the grave to go, 
If one were sure to be buried so." 

II. Westminster, the famous English abbey, is to all in- 
tents and purposes a cemetery, and a Catholic cemetery. 
For centuries it was one of the most famous burial places 
in Europe. In the bosom of the earth beneath it are 
buried nearly all the kings and many of the nobles of 
England since the eighth century. The great abbey is 
divided into chapels, corridors, cloisters, and vaults, where 
tombs and armorial devices meet the eye. On every side 
are inscriptions and quaint epitaphs in Latin or Old Eng- 
lish. You are in the midst of marble thrones, coronation 
chairs, mailed knights, and bronze busts of the great dead. 
Here is the modest tomb of Mary, the unfortunate Queen 
of Scots, side by side with the gorgeous mausoleum of 
her imperious kinswoman. Scattered around among the 
carved escutcheons of ancient houses are the monuments 



AND THEIR ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD. 



229 



of men whose memory the great country cherishes with 
pride — statesmen, orators, soldiers, inventors, musicians. 
And in Poets' Corner " is the rarest collection in the 
world of the remains of men eminent in every branch of 
literature. You linger around them with a kind of melan- 
choly pleasure, and you feel as though you were in the 
society of benefactors and friends. Ah, it is because they 
were authors, and frequently spoke to your soul through 
their works. Even now you remember their sayings, and 
the smiling statue seems to repeat them in your very hear- 
ing. Milton is lisping his immortal Paradise, Goldsmith 
his Traveller, Sheridan is penning his School for Scandal, 
and Garrick is striding the stage in his inimitable Hamlet. 
There is Edmund Burke thundering an invective, and 
Macaulay is gilding a historical page. 

But the shadows of evening are gathering around and 
throwing an awful gloom on the specterlike images. You 
must leave the abbey — it is dark, and the janitor is growing 
impatient. You request him, however, to shov/ you one 
more tomb before you leave — a tomb of singular interest 
to the American tourist — the tomb of the brave but un- 
fortunate soldier. Major Andre ; and by the light of the 
lamp you read : Sacred to the memory of Major John 
Andre, who fell a sacrifice to his zeal for his king and 
country, on the 2d of October, 1780, aged twenty-nine 
years. His gracious sovereign, George III, has caused 
this monument to be erected." Then, with a kind of 
mournful satisfaction, you leave Westminster Abbey, the 
burial place of the greatest of a great nation.* 

* When a death occurs in a well-to-do family in England, two men 
called mutes are placed at the door on the morning of the funeral. (They 
are called " mutes " from the fact that they are supposed not to speak a 
word.) These men are dressed in black, and have long, flowing crape 
bands depending from their hats. 



230 



EUROPEAN CEMETERIES 



III. In Pere-la-Chaise are buried most of the illustrious 
sons and daughters of modern France. This cemetery is 
avast landscape, elevated just enough to command a view 
of the city on one side and the surrounding suburbs on the 
other. Its gentle undulations are covered with every vari- 
ety of tomb and column, of obelisk and funeral shaft, with 
vases of sculptured garlands and flowers. Your eye is 
constantl)^ deciphering such names as La Fontaine, Mo- 
liere, Bellini, Rossini, Talma, Beranger, Sydney Smith, 
who held Acre against Napoleon. And among the sol- 
diers' graves, in the midst of a little flower garden, stone- 
less and letterless, is the tomb of " the bravest of the 
brave,'* Michel Ney. Not far from the entrance is the 
tomb of Abelard and Heloise, concerning whom so much 
sickly sentimentality is written and spoken. 

In the Jewish quarter of the cemetery is the tomb of 
Rachel, the famous tragedienne. The one word " Rachel " 
is over the entrance to the little chapel, and at the door is 
a basket for the reception of visitors' cards. Immediately 
opposite is the tomb of the Rothschild family. This part 
of the cemetery is closed on Saturdays. 

Though injured in the revolution of 187 1, there are no 
marks of violence now visible in the beautiful cemetery. 
It is again a lovely, well-laid-out, populous though silent 
city of the dead." The well-kept walks, lined with green 
and marble, cross each other at right angles. Long vistas 
of graves invite the eye, and rows of tombs succeed each 
other with all the regularity of buildings in a city block. 

A walk in this cemetery is an epoch in one's life. The 
distinguished dead, their names emblazoned in every shade 
and relief and color, are around you, sleeping their last 
sleep. There are the graves of rich and poor, old and 
young, famous and unknown. In the midst of yonder 
group a burial is even now taking place, though here at 



AND THEIR ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD. 



231 



your feet is a grave of nearly a century. There a strong 
man is weeping as he reads an epitaph ; here a loving 
hand is planting a wreath of flowers; while just around 
this tomb a little girl is lost in tearful prayer over her 
mother's grave. Around you are the ensigns of faith and 
affection — crosses, hearts and anchors, texts of Scripture, 
lighted tapers, couplets of poetry, words expressive of en- 
dearment, bereavement, sympathy. And yet you are not 
sad or pensive ; or, if you are, it is not that happy pensive- 
ness you feel when you walk in the quiet churchyard of a 
country village. Oh, no ; there is something in Pere-la- 
Chaise which distracts you — which does not allow you to 
indulge in that happy kind of mourning which has so 
much of sacred poetry in it. Somehow the names are too 
pompous, the inscriptions too laudatory, the grandeur too 
cold, the regularity too studied. If you could forget the 
nature of the place, it would be easy to imagine yourself 
in a gay and lovely city — in the midst of the pride and 
pomp of life, and not in the abodes of the dead, the silent 
resting place of the judged of God ! To me a walk in the 
simplest country graveyard would be far more inspiring 
and holy, for there one communes with the dead as if face 
to face. The long grass, the undulating mounds, in which 
the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep," the simple 
headstone, with nothing but the name, the date, and the 
Requiescat^ the ivied ruin and the yew tree's shade, in the 
country graveyard, all conspire to hallow your thought, 
to absorb your whole soul, to speak to you of God and 
eternity. But the tombs in Pere-la-Chaise seem rather a 
mockery — got up to gild the terrors of death, to carve 
deep in marble the meaningless heraldry of rank, and to 
lavish praises on the undeserving. An anecdote is told in 
connection with Pere-la-Chaise, and, whether or not the in- 
cident occurred in that graveyard we know not — but it 



232 



EUROPEAN CEMETERIES 



would not be out of place there. A boy and his father 
were in the cemetery; the child strayed away for a while, 
and, coming back, said to the father, "Papa, where are the 
wicked people buried ? " Why," replied the father, "every- 
where — here in this cemetery, and in others." "No, not 
here," said the child ; " I have been all around here and 
read the tombs, and none but the good are buried. In one 
place it was a father who loved his family so much, and 
was ever so kind to the poor ; in another it was a good 
boy who died young and went to heaven ; then it was a 
man who lived like a saint; and there was one old man 
who spent his long life in doing good and neglecting him- 
self." The child set the father thinking — suggesting to 
him the force of the sarcasm, " None but the good die." 

Montmartre and Mont-Parnasse are the other great cem- 
eteries of Paris; and St. Denis, about three miles from the 
city, is the Westminster of France. Almost every king, 
from Clovis to Louis XVI, is buried in that old abbey 
church. But, alas for French instability and French re- 
spect for royalty ! this grand old church and its tombs 
were well-nigh destroyed in 1793. By a decree of the 
National Convention in that year of revolution the abbey 
was ordered to be destroyed, and in three days fifty-one 
tombs were demolished and the bodies thrown indiscrimi- 
nately into common ditches prepared for them. The build- 
ing, stripped of its lead to make bullets for the revolution, 
was used as a cattle market up to the time of Napoleon, 
who commenced its restoration. It is now completed in a 
style surpassing even its former splendor. 

In the vaults of the Pantheon — an edifice now used as 
a Catholic church, but built, as the fagade tells you, " to 
the glory of great men " — are the tom.bs of Mirabeau, 
Voltaire, and Rousseau, with some others. Oh, one can 
never forget the occasion when he followed the semimili- 



AND THEIR ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD. 



tary turnkey down into these vaults of the godless dead ! 
As the mighty doors swing open there is a thrill in the 
heart that is something like terror. Once down, how- 
ever, half the fear has passed, for the place is clean and 
lightsome. Mirabeau, Voltaire, Rousseau — buried under 
a Christian church ! Mirabeau's tomb is empty, however. 
Though buried with all the pomp of a national, and more, 
of a Parisian, funeral, amid the pealing of bells and the 
roaring of guns which shattered every window in the 
church of St. Eustache, to which his body was carried, 
yet — wonderful consistency of French favoritism ! — he had 
not been three years in his tomb when popular fury tore 
the body from its resting place heaped every indignity 
upon it, " and it is now a matter of doubt whether it 
molders in the criminals' graveyard at Clamart, or stands 
a grim skeleton in some surgeon's studio." 

Voltaire and Rousseau ! Oh, names which bring the 
blush of shame to the cheek of every Christian man ! 
Who can look upon their tombs and be unmoved ? — and 
not think of the thousands — men, women, youth of both 
sexes — ruined by the poison of their teachings, the blas- 
phemy of their thoughts and words, the example of their 
godless lives ? 

But the one tomb of Paris — the tomb of tombs — is 
that which contains the ashes of the great Napoleon. It 
is under the grand canopy of the Hotel des Invalides. 
This institution is the great hospital for the aged and 
wounded soldiers of France. Who could attempt to de- 
scribe that vast asylum, covering eighteen acres of ground, 
filled with the spoils of every nation in Europe — banners, 
flags, cannon, musketry, and various other ensigns of war ? 
Here are the heroes of a hundred fights, old, warworn, 
and wounded, the proud proteges of a grateful nation. Here 
are they gathered around the ashes of their chieftain. And 
i6 



234 



EUROPEAN CEMETERIES 



when from time to time during the year, on national fes- 
tive days, the cannons boom over the city, how proudly 
beat the hearts of these old men ! How vividly these 
thunder-notes brmg to their mind the memories of battle- 
fields of long ago, when they fought under the gaze of 
their hero-chief for fame, for glory, and for France ! Hot 
and fast the tears gather in their eyes; and they rush into 
the chapel, whose walls and ceilings are covered with the 
shattered flags of every nation, and there they offer the 
remains of their poor lives to the God of war ; there they 
ask pardon for the past, and pray for the reward that 
awaits the soldier of the Cross. And, oh, kneeling there, 
they think of their brethren in arms, whose bodies molder 
on every battlefield of Europe; whose blood has reddened 
many a plain ; whose bones are whitened by the waters of 
the Rhine, the Niemen, and the Arno. The snows of Mos- 
cow have buried some; the common ditch of Waterloo 
has received most of the remnant. And so these brave 
veterans have gathered on the evening of life's battle-day 
around the bones of their chief — of him whom they loved ; 
whom they followed wherever he would lead, for it was 
always to glory ; the idol of his friends, and his foes' terror 
— Napoleon Bonaparte, soldier, statesman, and emperor. 

To this Hotel des Invalides his ashes were brought, 
according to his dying wish, in 1841 : I desire that my 
ashes repose on the banks of the Seine, among that French 
people whom I have loved so much." His mausoleum is 
the grandest in all France, as it should be. It consists of 
a circular crypt, open above, and surrounded by a mass- 
ive marble balustrade, over which you look down on the 
tomb. This latter is a huge solid block of polished red 
sandstone from Lake Onega, in Finland, hollowed out for 
the coffins. Twelve colossal figures in marble, emblem- 
atic of twelve leading victories gained by the emperor, 



AND THEIR ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD. 235 



and between th^m sixty flags, adorn the interior. The 
marble floorings are of the richest, and a lamp always 
burns there. The keys of the coffins are laid upon the 
altar. The silence of the place is unbroken save by the 
whispers of the tourist or the noise of footsteps on the 
marble pavement. 

But we can not leave Paris without a word about its 
Catacombs. They are quite as ancient, though not so 
historical, as the Roman Catacombs. They were formerly 
quarries, worked as far back as the Roman period, yield- 
ing a soft kind of limestone, which hardens on expo- 
sure to the air. These subterranean galleries extend un- 
der a great portion of Paris, and in 1784 threatened the 
safety of several streets. They were ingeniously propped 
up, however, named after the streets overhead, and 
opened up by sixty different entrances in the suburbs. 
During the Revolution and the Reign of Terror immense 
numbers of bodies were thrown in confused masses into 
these cavities; but in 1810 a regular system was organ- 
ized for their proper arrangement. Partitions were made, 
air admitted plentifully, and channels cut to carry off the 
water. The apartments are artistically lined with human 
bones intermingled with rows of skulls. Even chapels 
are made of these ghastly materials, and furnished with 
inscriptions. As far as I have been informed, no bodies 
have been interred there in late years.* 

* When one dies in France, the coffin usually is placed in the door- 
way of the house. It is covered with a black pall, if the deceased was of 
mature years ; with white, if a young person. The house is draped in 
mourning, and a vessel of holy water is near, from which every passer-by 
is expected to sprinkle a little on the coffin, while he utters a prayer for 
the soul of the deceased. If the passer-by is in a hurry, it will suffice if 
he touch his hat and breathe a little prayer. Should the friends of the 
deceased be very poor, they place at the door a very small table, covered 
with a piece of black cloth. Crape on the doors I have never seen. 



236 EUROPEAN CEMETERIES 

IV. We shall not delay long at the Roman Catacombs, 
as you are already well acquainted with their history. 
They were, I need not tell you, at once the home and the 
burial place of the early Christian. Protestant and infidel 
writers, who know little of their origin or history, would 
have us believe that these subterranean galleries were 
excavated for the purpose of obtaining stone and cement 
for Roman buildings. Haters of all true and ancient re- 
ligion, they would divest the Catacombs of a dangerous 
importance. They know that the Catacombs afford us 
the grandest testimonies in favor of the Real Presence, 
the invocation of saints, prayers for the dead, as well as 
proofs of the honor shown throughout all ages to the 
Virgin Mother of God. 

Oh, no, dissenting friends, the Catacombs were not 
sand-pits, as you say. No, indeed. The soil is hard, and 
almost rocky. And they were not quarries, for the soil is 
not hard enough. It is too hard for cement and too soft 
for stone, but it is just the thing for excavation, so that 
even props were unnecessary. Of course, all around the 
entrances may be seen the semblance, at least, of sand- 
pits. But this is easily explained. The early Christians 
thus covered up the entrance to their hiding places, and 
disposed of the matter excavated. Sand-pits and quarries 
are irregular and shapeless; but nothing could be more 
regular, more precise, or better arranged than these gal- 
leries. They are arched overhead like a railway tunnel, 
and some of them are as straight as an arrow. 

During persecution these Catacombs were the home of 
the early Christians. Here they lived, prayed, died, and 
were buried. Here the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was 
offered up; and the chapels are still seen, with their rude 
frescoes and grotesque altars. 

A day in the Catacombs is a Christian day indeed ! 



AND THEIR ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD. 



There are two principal entrances — one at the Church 
of St. Sebastian, the other at St. Callistus, both on the 
Appian Way. You descend by about twenty stone steps 
of modern style ; you wrap your overcoat close around 
you, for the place is damp and chilly ; and as many peo- 
ple date a severe cold from some stormy day at a Flat- 
bush funeral, so many a lingering ailment, the tourist 
tells you, can be laid at the door of the Catacombs. Your 
guide gives you a torch, a straight corridor is before you, 
and you start out on your underground tour. Cut into 
the sides of these galleries are the receptacles for the 
dead. They are arched at the top, about eight feet long 
by four feet deep. In almost every one of them is a rude 
cipher or epitaph, or both ; but most of them have been 
cut out whole and taken to the Vatican Museum. The 
oldest epitaph in the Catacombs bears date of the reign of 
Vespasian, some forty years after the crucifixion. The 
words In pace are on almost every cavity. " In peace " — 
how beautiful ! Often, side by side with these two words, 
are a dove, an olive branch, and a fish, all beautifully em- 
blematic. The occupation of the deceased, or the manner 
of martyrdom he suffered, are not infrequently expressed 
by the implements depicted on his grave. Some of the 
inscriptions are singularly beautiful and full of devotion. 
The Greek Alpha (A) and 0?7tega (O) occur very frequently, 
as also "X P," the first two letters [Chi 2in6. Rho) in the 
Greek for Christ. Scenes from the Old and New Testa- 
ments are to be met on every side, such as the creation of 
Adam, the Deluge, with Noah sending out the dove, the 
three children in the furnace, Moses striking the rock, etc. ; 
and from the New Testament you have the Nativity, the 
presentation of the Magi, the baptism in the Jordan, the 
Good Shepherd, the raising of Lazarus, the denial of Peter, 
and the Resurrection. As in every other cemetery, old and 



238 



EUROPEAN CEMETERIES 



young, rich and poor, lowly and high born, are buried 
here. Side by side with " Florentius Fossor " (Florence the 
digger) you read the words Nobilis Matrona." Nearly 
all the Christians and many of the popes for the first four 
centuries are buried here, and it is computed that the en- 
tire Catacombs contain no less than seven million bodies ! 
The latest computations are that there are about nine hun- 
dred miles of excavated galleries. In some places there 
are two and three floors of gallery ; the guide points out the 
steps leading down to them. Nor is this to be wondered 
at, when we remember that they were the home of all 
Roman Christians for three centuries, and their burial 
place for eleven ! But let us, before we ascend, give the 
names of the most illustrious buried there : Anacletus, one 
of the first popes; Leo I and the first three Gregories, 
popes ; Leo IV was the last pope buried in the Catacombs, 
1050 ; three emperors — Honorius, Valentinian, and Otto 
II ; three Saxon kings — Cedwalla, Offa, and Ina ; the v/ife 
of the Emperor Honorius; Charlotte, Queen of Cyprus; 
and the Countess Matilda. 

And then we seek an exit, nor fear we of losing our 
way, for our guide is as familiar with these windings as 
were any of the primitive Christians. We come from the 
Catacombs satisfied on one point, viz., that the Catholic 
Church of to-day is the Church of the early Christians ; 
and that the Church which has no Holy Sacrifice, no Real 
Presence, no invocation of saints or prayers for the dead, 
or devotion to the Virgin Mother of God, is not identical 
with the ancient Church of the Catacombs.* 

* Italian funerals are strange things, indeed — picturesque and im- 
pressive. Those I have seen I shall not easily forget. The coffin is 
covered with a yellow pall instead of black, but with a black cross and 
black border. When you are told that yellow is used to represent im- 
mortality, you will be rather pleased v/ith the sentiment. The corpse is 



AND THEIR ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD. 



But why speak of the Catacombs ? All Rome is a 
vast Christian cemetery. The vaults of its churches are 
filled with the bones of martyrs ; the floors of its churches 
are but the tombs of saints. The crypt of the great St. 
Peter's is the resting place of nearly all the popes. Im- 
mense urns contained the dried-up blood of martyrs, col- 
lected fourteen or sixteen centuries ago. In one church 
are the remains of every Franciscan who died in Rome 
for the last five centuries ; in another, those of every 
Dominican. Any priest may offer up the Holy Sacrifice 
over the body of the saintly youth Aloysius. O'Neill and 
O'Donnell, the two Irish chieftains, are at rest in San 
Pietro, in Montorio ; John Philpot Curran's daughter 



never carried out before sunset, and lanterns are not infrequently used at 
the burial. 

If the deceased was a very poor person, the funeral is all the more 
impressive, for then the Society of " Bona Morte," or the " Freres de la 
Misericorde," attended to perform the sepulture. The members of this 
society are, for the most part, taken from very high families. They live 
in the world, and are only bound to acts of charity, such as to help the 
distressed, to bury the dead, and, when an accident occurs on the streets, 
to take the sufferers to a hospital. When engaged in these works of 
mercy they mask themselves, so as not to be recognized by their friends. 
At funerals they wear white, with blue capes, and white handkerchiefs 
over their faces. To meet one of these funerals in the silent twilight 
outside the walls of Rome is something not easily forgotten. The 
strange dress of the brotherhood, their strange mission, their strange 
manner of chanting as they go, will terrify the stoutest heart into some- 
thing like awful reverence. A priest attends each funeral, and the 
brotherhood is very much respected. Carriages stop, hats are removed, 
and the peasant people kneel till the funeral has passed. 

Around Naples most of the public cemeteries have only one grave 
for every day of the year (366 in all). A person is buried to-day, for in- 
stance, in one of these graves ; quicklime is thrown in ; and one dying 
on the same day next year is buried in the same grave ; and so on, every 
year. 



240 



EUROPEAN CEMETERIES. 



Amelia is buried in the Church of the Irish Franciscans ; 
and O'Connell's great heart is in the quiet shrine of St. 
Agatha. How sweetly sings the poet : 

*' O Rome the eternal, Rome the ever young ! 

Shrine of the saint and shelter of the sage, 
Balm of bruised hearts and nerve to souls unstrung, 

And golden euthanasia to age : 
From out the countless throng whose pilgrimage 

Ended within thy loving arms divine. 
Let me read three from out the immortal page — 

Tyrconnell's lord, Tyrowen's earl, and thine, 

Whose troubled heart now rests in Agatha's lone shrine." 

There was a day in human history when a comely 
Stranger stood at the door of a tomb in Judea. He spoke 
not a word, but He wept and sighed, and looked toward 
heaven. To the sorrowing friends around Him that morn- 
ing He had said : I am the resurrection and the life. He 
that believeth in me, although he be dead, shall live; and 
every one that liveth and believeth in me shall not die 
forever." Three feeble words then uttered He, and forth 
from the tomb came His buried friend ; and then they 
knew that He was "the resurrection and the life." 

From Him, O Christian people, learn how to live. He 
will teach you how to die; and in the joys of a beatific 
eternity you will learn once and forever that He is the 
Resurrection and the Life ! 



LOYOLA.— THE JESUITS. 



Delivered before the Loyola Union ^ Brooklyn. 

To the toast : Loyola and the Loyolas," how can I do 
justice in a short time, and in view of the fact that whole 
libraries have been written and volumes yet remain to be 
penned on the subject ? That we may not wander at ran- 
dom over a field in which there is so much temptation to 
be diffuse, I shall divide my subject into two parts. In 
the first, I shall present to you a brief history of the great 
order ; and in the second, I would vindicate the society 
from some charges made against it. 

I. At three o'clock on the morning of August 15, 1534, 
a lame man left his lodgings in Paris and climbed the 
steep hill of Montmartre that overlooks that city. Pros- 
trate on the greensward outside the parish chapel he 
recited his rosary, and frequently cast a glance around as 
if he expected somebody to join him. Soon the rising 
sun revealed to him the forms of six young men, whom he 
had not perceived, though standing quite near him. To 
these he said, familiarly, ^' I thought I was first here, and 
I perceive I am last.'* 

The speaker, my dear friends, was Ignatius Loyola, 
scion of a noble Spanish house, the wounded hero of 
Pamplona, now, though forty-two years old, student in 
the University of Paris, and destined to be the founder of 
the illustrious Order of Jesus. Of the other six students 
four were Spanish, one Portuguese, and one, the oldest, a 
Frenchman and a priest — the only priest of the party, 

(241) 



242 



LOYOLA.— THE JESUITS. 



twenty-four years of age. They had met by previous 
agreement. For a moment all was calm ; no one spoke ; 
but an indefinable meaning lurked in their repose and 
was eloquent in their silence. At length Ignatius, gather- 
ing his thoughts in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, 
spoke, and unfolded in impassioned language the purpose 
that he had been nursing in his breast for fourteen long 
years. Yes, since the day that he read the Lives of the 
Saints, after the siege of Pamplona, through his retreat 
in the cave of Manresa, and all through the arduous 
studies he made at Santa Barbara and Paris in order to fit 
himself for his mighty work, he never for a moment lost 
sight of the wondrous purpose he was now about to un- 
fold to these six companions. Seldom, if ever, since the 
day of Pentecost did God give to man the power to speak 
as Ignatius spoke that morning, with Paris awaking at his 
feet and the whole world in his soul's embrace. He soon 
transmitted to the hearts of his hearers the fire that 
burned within his own ; and, falling on his knees, he 
ended with a prayer of unsurpassed unction to Our Lady, 
w^hose glorious Assumption day was dawning. They arose. 
It was broad daylight. They entered alone into the crypt 
of the church.- Peter Lefevre — for he was the priest — 
celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, at which they 
all received Communion. Then they made a vow to live 
in chastity, to observe perpetual poverty, to undertake a 
voyage to Jerusalem, and to throw themselves at the feet 
of the Sovereign Pontiff in order to receive his command 
and approval. This was all. The Society of Jesus was 
founded. 

Who shall recount their after-history ? Who shall pen 
the early history of that society, which, after the Catholic 
Church of God, is the most wonderful association ever 
formed on earth for any purpose ? 



LOYOLA.~-THE JESUITS. 



243 



Five years after that wistful morning on Montmartre, 
the vicar of Jesus Christ, having read the Constitutions 
of the order presented by Ignatius, and knowing how 
sadly the times needed such men, exclaimed, ^' The finger 
of God is here ! " and approved the society. And although 
no order hitherto instituted in the Church exacted so 
many and such severe proofs and tests of vocation, no 
order ever had wkhin as short a time so many and so dis- 
tinguished applicants. The original seven were men of 
great parts. Of Ignatius w^e have spoken ; of Francis 
Xavier we shall speak later. Laynez, the second general 
of the order, was one of the lights of the Council of Trent 
and the vanquisher of the Huguenots at Poissy. The 
others became the best controversialists and most bril- 
liant university professors of the age. When the order 
was approved at Rome it had only three new members — 
ten in all. They elected Ignatius, against his will, first 
general of the society, and he professed five of them on 
Easter Sunday at the mass himself celebrated. Then 
began the development and spread of the Compagnie de 
Jesus " (for such was its name ; they were called Jesuits 
by their enemies about the year 1600). Then entered into 
their ranks eloquent orators, accomplished theologians, 
keen writers, ardent defenders of truth — men zealous to 
diffuse the faith of Christ and die martyrs to the cause of 
God. The company numbered within its ranks the finest 
minds in Europe — Bellarmine, Sa, Maldonatus, Suarez, 
Clavius, De Lugo, Canisius, and the saintly youth Gon- 
zaga. Their name was known in every university in 
Europe, in the courts of kings, on the banks of the Rhine, 
the Thames, and the Shannon. Martyrdom was the fate 
of almost every one of them in England for nearly a cen- 
tury ; and while Lefevre was teaching in the courts of 
Ratisbon and expounding Scripture to the savants of May- 



244 



LOYOLA.— THE JESUITS. 



ence ; and while Canisius was founding colleges all over 
Europe, Francis Xavier was baptizing Indians and Japa- 
nese and the Wanar Islanders by the thousand, so that 
frequently at the close of the day he was unable to lift 
his right arm. The divine gift of tongues facilitated his 
work, and it is recorded, on authority beyond dispute, 
that he raised the dead to life. From his desolate mis- 
sions he constantly wrote to his general, Ignatius, and 
this duty he always performed on his knees. India and 
Japan were in his hands, and he was aiming for the jealous 
Chinese Empire when God called him to rest. Human 
nature gave out ; his companions surrounded him. They 
laid him on the sandy shore ; he smiles, presses his crucifix, 
and dies after gasping, In te Domine, speravi ; non con- 
fu7idar in ceternmmi!' 

But China, too, was reached by the sons of Loyola. 
Nunez, Ricci, Valignani, the famous Oriental linguist, and 
others, not only converted by the thousand, but estab- 
lished colleges in every city in China, and had followers 
among the greatest and best in the land. And it was only 
when the cupidity of merchants and the jealous intrigue 
of enemies succeeded in persuading the Chinese Govern- 
ment that the Jesuits would sell their country into the 
hands of Europe, that the order lost its hold on the people. 
But other lands were gained. The sons of Ignatius evan- 
gelized Mongolia, Ceylon, Bengal, and Coromandel. Rob- 
ert de Nobili, nephew of popes and emperors, became the 
apostle of the Brahmans ; while John of Britto, the Jesuit 
son of the viceroy, died a martyr in Maduras. Thibet, 
Tartary, Syria, Persia, and Armenia received the gospel 
from the Jesuits, as also the empire of Abyssinia and the 
coasts of Caffraria, Mozambique, and Guinea. 

And while all this was going on in the Old World the 
Jesuit was at his missionary work in the New. From 



LOYOLA.— THE JESUITS. 



245 



Labrador to Mexico, and from the Andes to the strait of 
Magellan, the indefatigable sons of Loyola were gaining 
souls to Christ. They converted the ancestors of those 
Indians who still keep the faith in the villages by the St. 
Lawrence. They tasted martyrdom in this very State of 
New York at the hands of the Iroquois ; and in New 
England — sad to tell — one, a saintly man, who loved the 
Indians, was butchered by the colonists. Marquette did 
wonders in geographical discovery; Pedro Claver wrought 
marvels in missionary toil and love among the slaves of 
the Southern plantations ; and a Jesuit became the first 
Catholic bishop in these United States. 

The happiest colonies in the world — known as Re- 
ductions — grew in South America under the fostering 
care of the Jesuits. One hundred and twenty-five years 
ago there were in Peru 526 Jesuits; in Mexico, 572; and 
so of other places on this hemisphere. 

Meanwhile all Europe was filled with their fame. 
Aquaviva, Francis Borgia, John Casimir, the Bollandists, 
Bourdaloue, Columbiere, and others of equal distinction, 
were Jesuits. In 1626 the society had 15,000 members ; 
in 1773, 20,000. Then came their suppression, of which 
we shall speak later. At present their are about 10,000 
Jesuits in the world, all admittedly among the most 
learned, devoted, and pious men on the face of the globe. 
We will close this first part of our imperfect sketch by a 
quotation from a Protestant author, a passage as elegant 
in style as it is remarkable because of the wonderful story 
it unfolds (Macaulay) : 

"Before the order had existed one hundred years it 
had filled the whole world with memorials of great things 
done and suffered for the faith. No religious community 
could produce a list of men so variously distinguished; 
none had extended its operations over so vast a space; 



246 



LOYOLA.— THE JESUITS. 



yet in none had there ever been such perfect unity of 
feeling and action. There was no region of the globe, 
no walk of speculative or of active life, in which Jesuits 
were not to be found. They guided the councils of kings. 
They deciphered Latin inscriptions. They observed the 
motions of Jupiter's satellites. They published whole libra- 
ries — controversy, casuistry, history, treatises on optics, 
Alcaic odes, editions of the Fathers, madrigals, catechisms. 
The liberal education of youth passed almost entirely into 
their hands, and was conducted by them with conspicuous 
ability. They appear to have discovered the precise 
point to which intellectual culture can be carried without 
risk of intellectual emancipation. Enmity itself was com- 
pelled to own that, in the art of managing and forming 
the tender mind, they had no equals. Meanwhile, they 
assiduously and successfully cultivated the eloquence of 
the pulpit. With still greater assiduity and still greater 
success they applied themselves to the ministry of the 
confessional. Throughout Catholic Europe the secrets of 
every government and of almost every family of note 
were in their keeping. They glided from one Protestant 
country to another under innumerable disguises, as gay 
cavaliers or as simple rustics. . . . They wandered to coun- 
tries which neither mercantile avidity nor liberal curiosity 
had ever impelled any stranger to explore. They were to 
be found superintending the observatory of Pekin. They 
were to be found, spade in hand, teaching the rudiments 
of agriculture to the savages of Paraguay. Yet, whatever 
might be their residence, whatever might be their employ- 
ment, their spirit was the same — entire devotion to the 
common cause, implicit obedience to the central authority. 
None of them had chosen his dwelling place or his voca- 
tion for himself. Whether the Jesuit should live under 
the arctic circle or the equator, whether he should pass 



LOYOLA.— THE JESUITS. 



247 



his life in arranging gems and collating manuscripts at the 
Vatican, or in persuading naked barbarians in the South- 
ern hemisphere not to eat each other, were matters which 
he left with profound submission to the decision of others. 
If he was wanted at Lima, he was on the Atlantic in the 
next fleet. If he was wanted at Bagdad, he was toiling 
through the desert with the next caravan. If his ministry 
was needed in some country where his life was more inse- 
cure than that of a wolf, where it was a crime to harbor 
him, where the heads and quarters of his brethren, fixed 
in the public places, showed him what he had to expect, 
he went without remonstrance or hesitation to his doom.*' 
11. It has been said of St. Ignatius that his constant, 
earnest prayer while here on earth was that his society 
might, like him on whose life it was modeled, be always 
persecuted and crucified to the world. If this be so, we 
have only to say that his prayers were heard, for no order 
in the Church of God — yea, not all the orders together — was 
so hated and persecuted and calumniated as the Society 
of Jesus. That this was the prayer of Ignatius his life 
fully proved. He feared when the world treated his order 
well. He thought something must be wrong when the 
world and the worldly-minded praised him and it. We 
are told of the great Daniel O'Connell that he always 
feared something was going wrong when the London 
Times spoke well of him. And so it is told of Ignatius 
that he was once found in a sad and depressed state. He 
was, in fact, afiiicted ; and why ? Because he observed that 
in a certain province the affairs of the society went for- 
ward with too much tranquillity, and that its members 
enjoyed equally the favor of the court and of the people. 
The society must not be doing its duty, he thought, from 
his own experience. When he was taken up with the care 
of his own soul, no one thought of ill-treating him ; on the 



248 



LOYOLA.— THE JESUITS. 



contrary, he was venerated as a saint. But when he was 
occupied with the spiritual advancement of his neighbors, 
they took up arms against him, and he soon found ene- 
mies, imprisonment, and chains ; he was treated as a sedi- 
tious disturber of the peace, and ordered to be silent. 
^' You enjoy a long truce," said one of his friends to 
him in Paris, when the saint, who as yet knew little French, 
could not labor for the salvation of souls. "It is true," 
he replied, " the world grants me a truce, because I do 
not make war upon it; but let me once come out of the 
camp, and you will see Paris up in arms against me." 
And this is the whole history of the cause of the persecu- 
tion of the Jesuits. The soldiers of the Church in every 
land are hated and calumniated. But the Jesuits were 
the most fearless battalion in God's militant Church, the 
men who fought falsehood most strenuously, inveighed 
against injustice and oppression most successfully, and, 
above all, who became the strongest ally of the Holy See 
at Rome. Hence their enemies. And when they suc- 
ceeded in conquering an enemy, that enemy invariably 
heaped calumny and dark suspicions upon them. "You 
will be hated for my name's sake," said our Lord to his 
disciples. And so for the last three hundred years the 
sons of Loyola have borne the distinctive mark of the 
followers of Christ. Though upholding truth with only 
the weapons which the gospel gave them, though ever 
preaching submission to lawful authority in Church and 
State, they have been denounced as framers of sedition 
against both. They have been murdered by raging mobs, 
sent to the scaffold in the name of law, banished in the 
name of order and peace. The very head of the Church, 
only one hundred years ago, was compelled by the blind 
fury of the enemies of the Church, as well as of its false 
friends, to disband them altogether, thus depriving him- 



LOYOLA.— THE JESUITS. 



249 



self of the most intrepid defenders of the Holy See. But, 
worse than all, cruel calumny and misrepresentation fol- 
lowed them wherever they went, till their very name be- 
came a bugbear in Protestant and infidel ears, and even 
awakened fear in the hearts of timid and ill-educated 
Catholics — yea, till their very name became a synonym 
for lying, treachery, and fraud. 

And now the question presents itself, What have the 
Jesuits done to merit this widespread odium ? What is 
there in their constitution or in their history to warrant 
these accusations ? Absolutely nothing that even their 
enemies can adduce. And this is growing plainer every 
day as history unfolds itself. No new development in the 
social, kingly, or polemical history of Europe but exoner- 
ates the Order of Jesus from the vile things heaped upon 
their name in the past. And, further, when an accusation 
turned out after years to be unfounded, the Christian-hating 
accuser frequently took the part of the wolf in the fable 
and exclaimed, If it was not you, it was your father." 
Why, one of the greatest statesmen our country ever pro- 
duced announced, in a public speech, that Ignatius Loyola 
was the inventor of the Inquisition ! (The Inquisition was 
begun years and years before Ignatius was born.) The 
Jesuits had a bad name, and they might as well father the 
Inquisition too. ^' If it was not you, it was your father." 
But the subterfuge under which John Quincy Adams tried 
to hide himself from the odium of this anachronism was 
more ridiculous than the blunder itself. Now, if scholars 
make such mistakes, what can we expect from common 
folk? 

In order to understand what the Jesuit really is, we 
must take into our hands and study the Constitutions and 
Spiritual Exercises " of his society. These we pronounce 
such as ought to make a saint of any man who would 
17 



250 



LOYOLA.— THE JESUITS. 



follow them and carry them out in his everyday life. He 
who enters the society must form his life on these; and 
he can not be a member until he has done so. He must, 
on occasion, repeat them from memory. They are his daily 
meditation, his food, his life. In them he is taught to re- 
nounce all things for the sake of his soul's salvation, the 
salvation of others, and the Greater Glory of God. In 
them he is taught absolute obedience and forgetfulness of 
self. But the Jesuit goes further. In beholding the per- 
petual struggle of the devil and his ally, the world, to de- 
stroy the souls that Christ has redeemed, he is moved to 
holy indignation and zeal, and he begs of God the privi- 
lege of enlistmg under the Banner, that he, too, may wage 
unceasing war against the devil and his allied hosts and 
may conquer souls to Christ. Under this education the 
Jesuit enrolls himself among the soldiers of Christ, and 
begins his warfare against the world and its countless forms 
of sin and error. This is all there is in it. 

Oh, that we had time to take up, one by one, the indi- 
vidual instances in which the Jesuits have been blamed, 
calumniated, and condemned ! What a different idea we 
would have of them from that with which infidel history 
and anti-Catholic hatred have associated their name ! At 
one time they are called regicides, because a man who 
spent a month as an extern scholar at one of their pro- 
vincial colleges sought to murder Henry IV of France. 
Again, they are accused of subverting the commerce of a 
nation, because one of their members, noticing the cruelly 
exorbitant prices charged his poor starving converts in 
South America, procured food for them at a quarter of the 
price. Through their extreme zeal and their unrivaled 
learning they attain the highest places at home and abroad, 
in university professorships and court confidence; but if 
in these high places they frown on the injustice of minis- 



LOYOLA.— THE JESUITS. 



251 



ters such as Pombal, or discountenance the amours of 
courtesans like Pompadour, they are intrigued against 
without regard to truth, humanity, or faith. Because they 
were mild in the confessional, and insisted on the aphor- 
ism approved by the Church — " Sacra?nenta propter ho^ni- 
nes " — Pascal and his Port Royal Jansenists would hold 
them up before the world as lax moralists, tending to lower 
the standard of human virtue, making the end justify the 
means ; while a century afterward, Voltaire, who certainly 
did not love them, desired their extinction for the very 
opposite reason — because they defended revealed religion 
and upheld the purity of private morals. Such has been 
the fate of the Jesuit in European history. 

Whenever the Holy See — which always maintained the 
law of God, the liberty of the Church, and the rights of 
the oppressed — came into conflict with kings and ministers, 
the great Order of Jesus was its ally and its friend. Here 
was another great pretext; this alone was enough to engen- 
der the world's enmity against it. At length diplomatic 
pressure was brought upon the Holy See, much against its 
will, by all the courts which had expelled the order, to in- 
duce Clement XIII to suppress them; but the aged Pope 
stood firm. At his death. Cardinal Ganganelli was elected 
and took the name of Clement XIV. He hesitated long 
before taking the decisive step to which they were urging 
him. At last, with tears in his eyes, he signed the decree, 
Z)ominus ac Rede^nptor Nostor^'' in the year 1773, by which, 
for the sake of peace, without at all declaring the order 
guilty, he suppressed it in every part of the world, and 
directed that those of its members who were priests should 
fall into the ranks of the secular clergy. 

It was only after the suppression that the world began 
to say kind things of the order. Ah, when a man is not 
in our way we can praise him. A famous author once 



252 



LOYOLA.— THE JESUITS. 



wrote anent the suppression : " Thus is lost irretrievably 
the finest work of man, unrivaled by any human institu- 
tion. The human race has lost that wonderful and invalu- 
able assembly of twenty thousand men, disinterestedly and 
unceasingly occupied with functions most important and 
most useful to mankind.'* 

Nor did all the nations act on the decree which sup- 
pressed the Jesuits. Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, 
to his honor be it told, did not notice the decree, retained 
the Jesuits in his dominions, and bade them exercise all 
their functions as if nothing had happened. Catharine II 
of Russia was so devoted to them that her conduct forced 
the Pope to exempt her empire from the operation of the 
bull, and various other efforts were made elsewhere to 
keep the glorious society from dying out. In 1814 Pius 
VII appointed a general of the order and practically re- 
stored it, and from that day to the present time the for- 
tunes of the society have varied with the varying strength 
of the forces, infidel or revolutionary, which may have 
been arrayed against it. 

And now that we have made the Jesuit pass before us 
in review, so to speak, let us ask, AVhat is there in his char- 
acter or in his views to startle us ? What is the Jesuit, 
that any earnest Christian ought not to be ? Open the 
Gospel or the Epistles, and see what God demands of 
every one of us. Perfect chastity, self-denial, mortifica- 
tion, fasting, voluntary austerities, the taking up of the 
cross voluntarily instead of waiting till Providence lay it 
on our unwilling shoulders ; the renouncing of father, 
mother, brother, sister, and all worldly goods, the more 
readily to follow Christ — these are all demanded of the 
most ordinary Christian. Surely we must admit that the 
Jesuit goes nearer to that standard than other Christians. 

There is one fact which of itself would prove the mag- 



LOYOLA.— THE JESUITS. 



253 



nificence of the Jesuit Society, even in the absence of 
every other, and that is that good men have almost 
unanimously praised the order. It is the bad men who 
have hated it; but the wicked are always louder and bet- 
ter heard and more daring than the timidly good. Ten 
bad men with pistols, vile pens, and bitter tongues will 
scare and silence a hundred peaceful people. So it has 
been in the past, so will it ever be. 

In conclusion, let us hope that the day will never 
come, for the sake of everything that the Church of God 
holds dear and Heaven approves and consecrates, when 
the name of the Order of Jesus shall cease to be a name 
of welcome sound to Christian ears, of soothing consola- 
tion to Christian minds and hearts. Let us pray that its 
noble sons may go on conquering and to conquer, for the 
greater glory of God and the eternal salvation of souls; 
holding up before the world that glorious motto which 
has been their inspiration in the past and will be their 
pride and joy in the eternal future, ^^Ad majorem Dei 
gloriamy 



A "DARK AGES" RETROSPECT. 



Delivered before the Loyola Union, Brooklyn. 

I WOULD take the liberty this evening, gentlemen, to 
call your attention to a portion of the world's history 
which is known as the Middle or Dark Ages. The answer 
to two questions will form the subject-matter of this dis- 
course; and the two questions are: What was the social 
and literary condition of these ages ? and, second, What 
do we owe to them ? 

And, first of all, my dear friends, let us agree as to 
what we understand by the term " Middle " or " Dark '' 
Ages. Most historians agree that the Middle Ages began 
with the downfall of the Roman Empire in the West, in 
476, and terminated with the fall of the same in the East, 
1453 — a space of nine hundred and seventy-seven years. 
You will fix the date more satisfactorily for yourselves, 
and quite as correctly, by making the period begin at the 
year 500 and end with the discovery of America. The 
" Dark " Ages almost correspond in extent with the Mid- 
dle Ages — not lasting, perhaps, quite so long. The term 
dark '* refers to moral, intellectual, and social darkness, 
and explains itself. 

I. Now, what was the condition of Europe during the 
Middle Ages ? We put in a general answer, to the effect 
that, though there was much degradation and anarchy 
and ignorance, these ages are not at all the dark ages 
they are often represented to be. We must bear in mind 
that it was the aim of infidel and anti-Catholic historians 

(254) 



A "DARK AGES" RETROSPECT. 



to belittle these ages, and to ascribe to China and to 
Arabia the inventions and the cultivation which they are 
unwilling to credit to the monks of old and to the en- 
lightened pontiffs of the Church. Pity, but true ! 

While Rome continued to be the seat of empire, there 
was comparative peace in Europe ; but no sooner had 
Constantine removed the seat of empire to Constanti- 
nople, than the savage hordes of the North and West be- 
gan their work of depredation. Franks, Goths, Vandals, 
Visigoths, and Huns successively swept over the most 
fertile plains of Europe. They carried everything before 
them. They conquered but to destroy. From the year 
400 to 600 the dire work went on, invasion succeeding in- 
vasion ; and thus pushing on, as wave driving wave, they 
covered the face of Europe with desolation and terror. 
Here, my friends, you have the great first cause of the 
anarchy and woe which marked the beginning of the Mid- 
dle Ages. Families were sundered, agriculture was aban- 
doned, religion almost paralyzed, laws despised, and liter- 
ature all but exterminated because of the burning of libra- 
ries and schools. It was not until the end of the tenth 
century that Europe began to enjoy quiet and prepare for 
a better state of things. Christianity had at last done its 
work. She first tamed, then civilized and enlightened ; 
and soon the savage was on his knees at her shrine, and 
swore undying fidelity to her cause. The races settled on 
the lands, and began to sow the seeds of mighty nations. 
Their warlike enthusiasm was turned into another chan- 
nel, and, what with deeds of chivalry and feats of war in 
the Crusades, Europe became another land. 

Letters revived with religion and peace. They had 
reached their lowest stage in the beginning of the tenth 
century, but they gradually improved, until they reached 
their zenith in the golden age of Leo. Learning had 



A ''DARK AGES" RETROSPECT. 



much to struggle against from the sixth to the tenth cen- 
tury. Noble men, especially those given exclusively to 
the profession of arms, even boasted of their want of 
learning and literary knowledge. Deeds and legal instru- 
ments often read, "And the aforesaid lord has declared 
that he did not know how to sign his name, owing to his 
being a nobleman.'' But the Church, through her popes 
and councils, was all this time battling in the cause of 
literature and learning. The papal decrees and the can- 
ons of the councils all show how earnest was the Church 
in establishing schools in every district, near every Church. 
Even in these dark days there were renowned schools of 
the liberal arts in Rome, Lyons, Paris, York, Oxford, Ratis- 
bon, Paderborn, and elsewhere. Great lights in the gen- 
eral gloom from time to time appeared. We might men- 
tion Gregory of Tours and Boethius of the sixth century; 
Gregory the Great, St. Isadore, and the Venerable Bede, 
in the seventh ; St. John Damascene, Charlemagne — not 
himself a scholar, but a powerful promoter of learning— 
and Alfred the Great, in the eighth and ninth centuries. 
Alfred was a translator and a poet. 

It is important here to mention that the Church about 
this time succeeded in breaking down a system which con- 
tinually kept the people at war with each other and 
hindered the progress of learning. I speak of the feudal 
system. By virtue of this system vassals were obliged to 
espouse the quarrels of their immediate lords. Rapine 
and murder were the ordinary results, nor could the most 
inoffensive citizen depend on one moment of perfect se- 
curity for either life or property. The Church had long 
been working against this system, and finally succeeded in 
this way : She made an agreement with the lords. The 
bishops ordered, under penalty of excommunication, that 
every week during the four days consecrated to our Lord's 



A "DARK AGES'* RETROSPECT. 



Passion, Death, Burial, and Resurrection — that is, from 
noon on Wednesday till the morning of the following 
Monday — whatever the cause might be of strife or quar- 
rel, all hostilities should cease. This compact was called 
" The Truce of God.'* Soon the prohibition was extended 
to the whole of Advent and Lent. It finally broke up 
unnecessary domestic wars and strifes. Men could travel 
unmolested four days every week. The system was then 
adopted all over Europe, including England, and it was 
approved by several councils of the Church. 

And so Europe was gradually coming into the light, 
and the " dark " ages were passing away. Would that we 
could dwell on the glories of the dawn ; that we could 
watch the clouds as they disappeared, and hail the lights 
as they succeeded each other in varied color and bril- 
liancy ! — Gerbert, Anselm, Lanfranc, St. Bernard, xAlbertus 
Magnus, Roger Bacon, and Thomas Aquinas I The last 
mentioned alone would shed luster on a whole firma- 
ment. 

Such, in brief, were the Dark Ages. And, before we 
proceed to answer the second query as to what we owe 
these ages, you will permit me to make a digression. I 
wish to state that during all the anarchy which confused 
the continent of Europe in the sixth and seventh centuries, 
Ireland — and I was pleased to see the fact noticed lately 
in an encyclopaedia, as I was studying this matter — Ireland 
was undisturbed, at peace, and in the height of her literary 
glory and saintly excellence. Favored by her isolated 
position she was undisturbed, uninvaded, at rest. Truth 
and piety, science and sanctity had their home in the 
land, adorned her schools, immortalized her sons. Ire- 
land was then the Arcadia of the world, the class room of 
Europe. Her pupils were Gauls, Picts, Cimbri, Saxons. 
They came to learn from the lips of saints the divine sci- 



258 A "DARK AGES" RETROSPECT. 



ence of the saintly. And they went home to bless and 
praise the happy isle : 

'Twas the garden of Christendom, nurtured with care ; 
Every flow'ret of Eden grew peacefully there ; 
When the torch of the spoiler in Lombardy blazed, 
And the Mussulman's shout in the desert was raised, 
And high o'er the wreck of a fear-stricken world 
The standard of hell to the breeze was unfurled, 
Faith^ bleeding, retired to the Isle of the West, 
And with Science^ her handmaid, found shelter and rest." 

II. What do we of the nineteenth century owe to the 
Dark Ages ? What have they done for us ? The answer 
to this question opens up a subject so immense that we 
can not hope to do it justice. We owe to these dark 
centuries many a lesson, numerous improvements, nearly 
all the glory of our architecture, as well as the beginning 
of most of our inventions. 

To say nothing of the elevation of womanhood, for 
which we are indebted to the chivalry of the Middle Ages 
and to the place which the Mother of God holds in the 
Church, we owe to these ages all our modern languages — 
" the Italian, with its sweetness ; the French, with all its 
grace and delicacy ; the Spanish, with its stern dignity ; the 
German and English, with all their force and richness." 

And as to the vast influence for good exercised by 
monasticism in the Middle Ages, listen to Maitland, a not 
over-friendly critic, in the preface to his learned work : 
"It is impossible," he writes, " to get even a superficial 
knowledge of the mediaeval history of Europe, without 
seeing how greatly the world was indebted to the Mo- 
nastic Orders, and feeling that monasteries were beyond 
all price in those days of misrule and turbulence, as places 
where God was worshiped ; as a quiet and religious ref- 
uge for helpless infancy and old age, a shelter of respect- 



A "DARK AGES" RETROSPECT. 



259 



ful sympathy for the orphan maid and the desolate widow ; 
as central points whence agriculture was to spread over 
bleak hills and barren downs and marshy plains, and deal 
its bread to millions perishing with hunger and its pesti- 
lential train ; as repositories of the learning which then 
was, and well-springs for the learning which was to be ; 
as nurseries of art and science, giving the stimulus, the 
means, and the reward to invention, and aggregating 
around them every head that could devise and every 
hand that could execute, as the nucleus of the city which 
in after-days of pride should crown its palaces and bul- 
warks with the towering cross of its cathedral.'* 

This last sentiment in the tribute from Mr. Maitland's 
pen brings us to the architecture of the Middle Ages. Its 
monuments, even in their ruins, are the dream and the de- 
spair of this nineteenth century. They are scattered over 
the face of the Continent, of Great Britain and of Ireland. 
Indeed, a famous author has written that the last-named 
island resembles the Roman Campagna. Let us name, for 
the honor of these ages, the Cathedrals of Winchester, 
Canterbury, and York ; the churches of Westminster and 
Bristol, in England ; Sainte Croix, at Orleans ; Chartres, 
Paris, Rheims, and Amiens ; in Germany, the Church of 
Halberstadt, the Elisabethskirche at Marburg, the Church 
of Ulm, the Dom " of Cologne; and in Italy, the Cathe- 
drals of Pisa, Sienna, Milan, the Carthusian Church at 
Pavia, and the Church of St. Petronia at Bologna. What 
acute and skillful men were those who raised at Paris the 
Church of St. Paul ; at Rouen the Church of St. Ouen ; 
at Rheims the Abbey Church of St. Nicaise, which was so 
celebrated for its trembling pillar, oscillating when the 
tower bell was tolled; at Milan, and at Amboise, with its 
round towers containing staircases by which men on 
horseback could mount and descend ; at Westminster, 



26o A "DARK AGES" RETROSPECT. 



whose hall of state is still the astonishment of the most 
gifted mechanicians ! Why, their scaffoldings alone attest 
the very perfection of mechanical science. At the build- 
ing of the Cathedral of Pisa, so perfect were the appliances, 
that weights " which a thousand oxen could not have 
moved " were raised by ten young maidens, as a tablet in 
the church wall still testifies. The architecture of those 
ages everywhere gives witness to the knowledge of per- 
spective, of symmetry, of harmony of members, of pro- 
portion, collocation, of tempering parts with regard to the 
effects of the whole, which characterized the men who 
raised those marvels. In fact, if you seek evidence of 
the intellectual culture of the Middle Ages, it will be 
sufficient to point to the monuments of their architecture. 
These be the triumphs of intellectual stagnation and 
mediaeval ignorance ! 

The art of hand printing was known to the monks 
long before the time of the Dutch Koster or the German 
Gutenberg. But the German inventor secured all that 
was wanting — the press. Both inventions took place with- 
in the period commonly known as the middle ages. Of 
the illuminated manuscripts of this period we shall say 
nothing beyond stating that we can not approach them 
to-day. In the old and world-famed monastery of Monte 
Casino are to be seen some of the best work in Europe. 
On a fly-leaf of one volume in that great cloister I lately 
read the autograph of the English veteran statesman, 
Floreat! W. E. Gladstone." 

Music is eminently a child of the dark ages ; and a poor 
Benedictine monk, in inventing the gamut, has taught us 
to read music as we would the alphabet ; while another 
monk gave us the organ, and a third the best of the early 
treatises on the art of music. 

Although it is claimed that the Chinese invented gun- 



A "DARK AGES" RETROSPECT. 26 1 



powder long before the Christian era — and, indeed, before 
the Creation, for that matter ! — it is not difficult to show 
that this wondrous explosive was an invention of the pe- 
riod in question. We owe the invention to Schwartz, a 
monk of Cologne, about the year 1320; and, indeed, the 
invention was a great boon to mankind, if for no other 
reason than that it has entirely subverted the ancient mode 
of warfare. There is less carnage in gunpowder wars, if 
we can use the expression, than under the old system of 
hand-to-hand conflicts. 

Even the vegetable kingdom received the highest at- 
tention and cultivation in these ages ; so that botany is 
an art which we owe almost entirely to the monks. They 
studied the medicinal properties of plants and flowers — a 
matter of necessity at a time when the clergy were in 
many places the only physicians. From them we have 
received the beautiful religious names of flowers, such as 
the marigold, the Passion flower, the Easter flower, and 
others. There was even a floral calendar by which the 
flowers marked the division of time, and pointed out the 
religious festivals. 

Another product of the Dark Ages is the clock. It is 
as old as the year 1000, when the abbot Gerbert erected 
a timepiece for Otho of Magdeburg. He is said to be 
the inventor, though two others, both monks, dispute the 
claim. 

And what shall we say of the mariner's compass^ banks, 
paper, algebraic and arithmetical numbers, stained glass, 
and fine arts generally — invented or developed in these 
ages ? As we have said, they can not be treated in one 
lecture. Think of what these ages did for agriculture, 
painting, poetry ! During this period banks and post 
offices were first established ; glass and silk were per- 
fected ; spectacles were first used; coal first utilized for 



262 A "DARK AGES" RETROSPECT. 



fire, numbers and letters brought down to the level of the 
schoolboy. And yet these are called " the Dark Ages" ! 

It is very strange that the Catholic Church should be 
accused of promoting ignorance during the Dark " 
Ages. We have seen that these ages were not so ignorant, 
after all, and that the Church was not responsible for 
what ignorance there was. On the contrary, she fought 
against it and triumphed. 

But suppose they were ignorant ages, and that the 
Catholic Church was responsible. What of it ? Did our 
Lord Christ ever anywhere say that literature and learn- 
ing were to be distinctive marks of his Church ? Was the 
promotion of human learning a principal object of his 
mission ? If it were so, would he not have selected as the 
heralds of his mission men of talent and learning rather 
than poor, illiterate fishermen ? He would have chosen 
the philosophers of Greece and Rome. But " the weak 
things of this world he chose to confound the strong." 
No ; the Church of Jesus Christ, though yielding to no 
institution in her love for learning, never tells her sons 
that learning is an essential for the Christian. No ; the 
poor, ignorant man has at least as fair a chance of heaven 
as the learned man, and all the better chance, because on 
his deathbed he feels compunction, though he may not 
" know its definition." 



THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 



Delivered in the Church of the Transfiguration, 

Some time ago, an English vicar, enjoying a holiday 
in this country, preached in the city of New York. His 
subject was The Disposition of the Dead. He advo- 
cated the practice of burial in the ground, and opposed 
cremation. He argued that the frailest possible coffin 
should be used ; that the burial take place as soon as 
signs of dissolution appeared; and that it should be "in 
earth sufficient and suitable for the resolution of the body 
into its constituent elements, in accordance with the law 
of the land, which assigns six feet of earth.'* The preach- 
er spoke according to the decent and accepted sentiment 
of the majority of Christians in this matter. 

The advocates of cremation, however, do not seem to 
be on the decrease. They have recourse to every subter- 
fuge in order to justify and popularize their theory and 
action. They adduce the expense of funerals and inter- 
ments. They tell of the broad acres, the cemeteries, 
" withdrawn forever from the food-producing areas of the 
world." They quote the Earl of Beaconsfield as exclaim- 
ing, in the House of Lords, that he should like to see the 
shutting up of all the "God's acres" throughout the 
country, and so forth. 

There is no doubt, be it said in passing, that the cost 
of funerals is very large indeed — lavishl}" large among the 
rich, cruelly so with the poor. Bishops and rectors have 
time and again made efforts to lessen the abuse, and 

(263) 



264 



THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 



only with very partial success. Nor is the abuse confined 
to this hemisphere. It is calculated that the funeral rites 
of eighty thousand persons, who died in London one of 
these late years, cost more than four million dollars. 
Another calculation puts the cost of funerals, for Eng- 
land and Wales, at twenty-five million dollars a year. 

The Catholic Church, nevertheless, has always believed 
that inhumation is at once the most decent and the most 
religious way of disposing of the dead. It is the method 
sanctioned by antiquity ; it is scriptural ; it is .ecclesiastic. 
But, as two other methods have been employed in the dis- 
posal of the dead, a passing notice shall be given of them 
in this brief article. And so, with Shakespeare : 

Let's talk of worms and graves and epitaphs, 
Make dust our paper, and, with rainy eyes, 
Write sorrow on the bosom of this earth ; 
Let's choose executors, and talk of wills ; 
And yet not so — for what can we bequeath, 
Save our deposed bodies to the ground ? " 

Nothing gives us a clearer insight into the character 
of a people, than the manner in which they treat their 
dead; and you may count that people at once irreligious 
and uncivilized that respects not its departed ones. 
Christian people honor their dead, for they know that 
their bodies were once temples of the Holy Ghost; that 
this mortal will again put on immortality ; that these very 
bodies will rise again, and in their flesh shall see their 
God. But infidels, those who believe not in a future state, 
have no respect for their dead. And how can they bury 
with honor, who, denying the existence of the soul and of 
a future state, regard even the living body as a soulless 
clod of earth ? There can be none of the beautiful refine- 
ment of poetry, even, in such a people; and we know that 
a people are refined by the poetry of natural religion. 



THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 



265 



A belief in the resurrection of the body is the funda- 
mental motive of the Catholic Church in her discipline 
regarding the dead. With her, the Non omms moriar'' 
comes ultimately to apply to the body. 

The Christian body, if the term may be so used, had 
been too much honored in life to be neglected or dis- 
honored in death. Through that body the sacraments 
were applied to the soul. On its head once fell the re- 
generating laver of baptism. Frequently, on the rugged 
road through life, it was sanctified either by the chrismal 
cross in confirmation, or the extreme unction in dangerous 
sickness ; or yet, grandest of all, fortified by the life-giving 
"bread of angels." And so the Church, like a mother, 
clings to the body of her child, even in death. Before 
God's altar she blesses it, sprinkles it, incenses it. Yea, 
she blesses the very ground prepared for its reception! 
How different with the dead in non-Catholic communities! 
With them, all affection for the dead would seem to die 
out with the life of the lost one. The body is secreted in 
a dark room and kept out of sight, till, after a few cold 
psalms are read, the earth mercifully takes it away into 
its bosom. Then all is over. And this is one of the re- 
sults of that Reformation, whose votaries love the Scrip- 
tures, and who so often read : " I know that my Redeemer 
liveth, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. 
And I shall be clothed again in my skin, and in my flesh 
I shall see my God" (Job, xix, 25, 26). 

The first cemetery of which we have notice in history 
is an Egyptian one. It was situated on the borders of a 
romantic lake called Acherusia, which name signified the 
last state of man. This cemetery, and the lake, gave rise 
to much of the mythological marvels we read about Charon 
the ferryman, the ferry money, and the Elysian fields. The 
cemetery itself was called Elysium — rest, 
18 



266 



THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 



Nor was every one who died in the vicinity interred 
here. A board of forty-two judges constituted a com- 
mittee of investigation ; and if the deceased was not of 
good character his body could not be carried to the ceme- 
tery beyond the lake, but was sent down the river to a 
common ditch called Tartarus. Hence the "gloomy 
Tartarus" of mythology. If the deceased died insolvent, 
his body was given to the creditcrs, who kept it until it 
was ransomed. 

Then cemeteries began to spread throughout the 
world ; and though various other means of disposing of the 
dead crept in, burial in the ground was the most popular 
and most general. It is the method referred to in the 
earliest Scriptures; and all are familiar v/ith the touching 
scene in which Abraham is described as burying his wife 
Sara in a cave in the land of Canaan. I believe there is 
only once in all the sacred Scriptures a reference to cre- 
mation, and that is in I Kings, xxxi, 12, where we find 
related the fact that Saul and his three sons were cre- 
mated by the men of Jabez Gilead, in order to save the 
dead bodies from additional insults from the Philistines. 
The bones that remained, however, were afterward buried 
in the earth, while the people began a fast of seven days. 
Nevertheless, burial was only one of three methods of 
ancient interment. There were, besides, embalmment and 
cremation. 

Of the art of embalming, Egypt is the teacher as well 
as the originator; and doubtless the art had its origin 
in the desire, which is natural enough, to preserve the ob- 
jects of affection and love. The soil and climate of the 
country were particularly favorable to the work ; and 
Egyptian mummies are now as inoffensive to the senses 
as any articles of wood or stone. They are scattered all 
over this earth — in museums, libraries, and even private 



THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 



267 



houses. The great wonder is, where the Egyptians could 
have found all the drugs and spices and resins which we 
are told are necessary to the process of embalming; for it 
must be borne in mind that they embalmed almost every 
living thing, especially reptiles, and other noxious crea- 
tures, such as foxes, apes, and wild-cats. The Romans 
soon learned and adopted the art of human embalmment. 
It is strange that the custom of embalming has been 
found prevalent among the islands of the Southern Ocean. 
And the Peruvians had a way of preserving their dead by 
first burying them in snow and then applying a certain 
kind of bitumen, which kept the body not only perfect, 
but lifelike. In the monastery of Kreuzburg, near Bonn, 
the monks have been preserved in their costumes for cen- 
turies. The bodies, it was said, were first baked in a slow 
oven, then covered with gum and kept air-tight for a long 
time. At all events, the dead monks are there, standing 
erect in niches, and dressed in the habit of their order. 

The practice of cremation was once very general, as 
we may judge from the urns of the ancients. Indeed, 
these urns have been found over such extensive portions 
of the vvorld, that it is difficult to say to what countries 
in particular the custom belonged. Nearly all the illus- 
trious Romans were cremated and their ashes placed in 
gorgeous urns. These urns were generally deposited in 
tombs, or in columbaria in the Appian Way ; and there is 
an instance of a statue erected to a Roman emperor, a 
marble facsimile of himself, having the urn of his owm 
ashes placed in the right hand of the figure. We know 
that, after the siege of Sebastopol, some British officers 
found mortuary urns in the ground supposed to be occu- 
pied by the besiegers of Troy. And so of other ruins in 
the Orient. 

At the time of the introduction of Christianity, how- 



268 



THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 



ever, inhumation was the most general way of disposing 
of the dead. Cemeteries existed everywhere. They were 
usually placed outside cities, towns, or villages; and the 
words, " Stop, traveler ! " on the extramural tombs of 
Rome, meet the eye to the present day. Then Christian 
churches were erected, and those who were eminent for 
piety in life were buried, not in cemeteries, but inside the 
church and near the altar. It became then a prevalent 
desire among the faithful to be buried near these saints 
inside the church. Then some were buried a little outside 
the church wall ; and the extension of this practice was 
the origin of churchyards. These, in crowded towns, 
especially in the last two centuries, became offensive and 
unhealthy, and recourse was again had to the cemeteries. 
So that the order has been : cemeteries first, before the 
erection of Christian churches ; then churchyards, for cen- 
turies after the introduction of Christianity ; finally, in 
these days of hygiene, back again to the cemeteries. 

And so we come to the Christian cemetery, conse- 
crated, cared for, adorned with the green mantle of Na- 
ture, decorated by rare works of art ; those marble cities 
of the dead," spread through the world almost as densely 
as the noisy cities of the living; those silent homes where 
kind hands have planted rarest flowers, and loving lips 
have uttered sweet prayers, and aching hearts have learned 
to hope on in expectation of friendly reunions beyond the 
grave. 

A few words may here be devoted to some of the lead- 
ing Christian cemeteries of the Old World, in addition to 
what we have said in our European Cemeteries. 

Westminster Abbey may be called a Catholic cemetery. 
It was built by Catholics for Catholics, and Catholics were 
the first interred within its precincts. Its antiquity dates 
back to the seventh century, and is lost in the twilight of 



THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 



269 



fable. In this grand old abbey, for centuries one of the 
most famous burial places in Europe, are interred nearly 
every English king and queen from Alfred to George III, 
together with many of the nobles and nearly all the emi- 
nent men of the land. Its chapels and cloistered corridors 
are filled with tombs and armorial devices. Here, in ^' the 
light of other days," you read the varied epitaphs, or 
notice the crossed legs of those knights that fought in the 
Holy Land. In the chapel of Edward the Confessor, side 
by side with the gorgeous mausoleum of the imperious 
Elizabeth, you meet the tomb of Mary, the ill-fated Queen 
of Scots. In this chapel Catholic mottoes and emblems 
are all about you, for nearly all here interred are Catholics. 
Sir James Fullerton, a stanch Catholic of the time of James 
I, as his epitaph boldly tells, is buried in the chapel of St. 
Paul. 

Almost a mile from the city of Dublin is situated the 
now well-known Catholic cemetery of Glasnevin. In the 
beginning of this century the Catholics of the Irish me- 
tropolis were sorely in need of a burying place. The old 
Catholic graveyards had passed away, with the churches, 
into Protestant hands ; and though the Catholics still con- 
tinued to bury their dead in these graveyards, Catholic 
rites were forbidden. Catholic mourners were insulted, and 
fees were extorted by the Protestant incumbents. This 
state of things aroused the people. At a meeting of the 
Catholic Association, in 1823, the matter was brought up; 
and Daniel O'Connell, then a lawyer practicing in Dublin, 
proposed to form an association for the purchase of 
ground to serve as an asylum [these are his own words], 
where their bones might be deposited with the forms of 
Christian burial without fear of insult, and where the Irish 
Catholics might enjoy the exercise of a religious ceremony 
of which they only of the whole Christian world were de- 



2/0 



THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 



prived." O'Connell became the chairman of a committee 
on this matter, and thus inaugurated the very cemetery in 
which he himself was afterward so honorably interred. 
It was a memorable day, in May, 1869, when his remains 
were transferred to their final resting place in the O'Con- 
nell Circle" of the cemetery. The eloquent Dominican, 
who passed through this land a few years later, was the 
speaker chosen for the occasion. To fifteen thousand 
people he spoke that day, in the open air, in the presence 
of the most honored men then living in the land, and over 
the graves of the most honored of its dead. And then 
the remains were placed in the monument under the 
Round Tower. " My heart to Rome, my body to Ireland, 
my soul to God," is the leading legend which you can de- 
cipher as you peer through the iron gate of the vault. 
There let him rest, with the other brave ones whose graves 
are stoneless and whose epitaphs remain uncarved. 

" Far better they suit them, the ruin and gloom, 
Till Ireland, a nation, can build them a tomb." 

A distinguished British tourist has called Pere-la-Chaise 
the Glasnevin of Paris. This famous cemetery was so 
called from a priest of that name who had a country resi- 
dence on the site of the present cemetery chapel. He 
was a Jesuit, and the confessor of Louis XIV. It covers 
an area of about two hundred acres, and is one of the 
handsomest burying grounds in the world. Here are 
buried the most gifted sons and daughters of a truly 
gifted land, names of European celebrity. Intermingled 
with thousands of silent companions are the names of 
composers, actors, painters, poets, publicists, and military 
heroes, till your eye grows weary of reading famous names. 

A new and terrible feature came upon the history of 
this cemetery on the evening of that dread Communist 



THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 



271 



day, May 24, 187 1, when the dead bodies of the arch- 
bishop and five of his priests were thrown into its "Fosse 
Commune." What a grave for the worthiest sons of 
La Belle France"! Liberty, what crimes are com- 

mitted in thy name ! " The bodies were soon removed, 
however, and honorably buried. The archbishop was in- 
terred with his predecessors around the high altar of 
Notre Dame; and in the vestry, his blood-stained soutane, 
covered with the mud of the foul prison wall and ground, 
and torn by seven bullets, is shown the awe-struck tour- 
ist. Notre Dame is, then, the cemetery of the bishops of 
Paris. 

And St. Denis is the burial place of its kings — that is, 
it was until 1793. But alas for French stability and 
French respect for authority I in that dread year the 
Westminster of France was all but swept away ; the 
bodies thrown into common trenches prepared for them ; 
and the edifice, stripped of its lead to make bullets for the 
revolution, was used as a cattle market up to the time of 
Napoleon. It is now restored in a style surpassing its 
former magnificence. 

Montmartre, Mont-Parnasse, and the Catacombs, are 
the other great resting places for the dead of Paris. 
These last named are nearly as ancient though not as his- 
torical as the Roman Catacombs. They were formerly 
quarries, worked as far back as the Roman period, yield- 
ing a soft kind of limestone which hardens on exposure to 
the air. These subterranean passages extend under a great 
portion of Paris, and in 1784 threatened to undermine sev- 
eral streets. They were ingeniously propped up, however, 
named after the streets overhead, and opened up by sixty 
different entrances in the suburbs. During the Revolution 
and the Reign of Terror, immense numbers of bodies were 
thrown in confused masses into these cavities; but in 



2/2 



THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 



i8io a regular system was organized for their proper ar- 
rangement. The apartments are artistically lined with 
human bones, intermingled with rows of skulls. Even 
chapels are formed of these ghastly materials. No in- 
terments take place there at present. 

It is unnecessary to speak here concerning the Roman 
Catacombs, although they are perhaps the most densely 
thronged cities of the dead within the bosom of the earth. 
But all Rome is one vast burial ground. The vaults of 
its churches are filled with the bones of martyrs ; the floors 
of its churches are simply the tombs of saints. In the 
crypt of the great St. Peter's rest nearly all the popes. Im- 
mense urns in some churches contain the dried-up blood 
of martyrs, collected fourteen or fifteen centuries ago ; 
while the various convents of the older religious orders 
treasure the remains of their departed ones. On the floor 
of St. Pietro in Montorio you read the epitaph of O'Neill 
and O'Donnell, the Irish chieftains. In the quiet shrine 
of St. Agatha rests the great heart of O'Connell. 

Yes, and many another troubled heart has stolen to 
rest in various other cemeteries throughout the length 
and breadth of Europe. How wistful is a walk through 
the little cemeteries of Cannes, Vevay, Nice, Aix-le-Bains ! 
Are you not startled to meet, m the cemetery of the last- 
named resort, such an epitaph as Celestine O'Mahony, 
14 Mars, 1846 " ? O Hibernian Celt, dead or alive, where 
are you not ? 

There is a custom, so closely allied to our subject, that 
one feels bound to give it a passing word. It is the 
custom of mourning. The origin of wearing a different 
dress after the death of a friend arose doubtless from 
the carelessness or indifference w^hich is engendered by 
death in the family. The colors of mourning vary in dif- 
ferent countries. In Europe and America it is black ; in 



THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 



2/3 



China it is white (it was in white that the Roman ladies 
mourned) ; in Egypt, yellow ; in Ethiopia, brown ; and 
kings and cardinals mourn in purple. The ancient He- 
brews tore their garments and threw dust and ashes on 
their heads, and abstained from washing. The Persians 
cut off their hair. In ancient Greece, when a general died, 
the army cut off not only their own hair, but the manes of 
their horses. Both Greeks and Romans hired mourning 
women'* for funerals; and in the old tombs which have 
recently been opened in Herculaneum are found lachry^na- 
torteSy or tear-bottles, in which the mourners preserved 
their tears. The custom of private mourning is universal 
to-day. Public mourning would appear to be on the 
wane; though it obtained in the United States on the 
death of Franklin, Washington, Lafayette, and Lincoln. 

From what has been seen of this gloomy subject, it is 
scarcely necessary to add, in closing, that burial in the 
ground is the method sanctioned by God's wise Church 
regarding the disposal of our dead; that embalmment, in 
its old forms, is not practicable; and that cremation is 
irreligious and unchristian, if not infidel. At all events, 
the advocates of cremation are chiefly agnostics and 
enemies of revealed and Christian truths ; and the practice 
is certainly meant to assail the dogma of the resurrection 
of the dead ; while their assumption that cremation is a 
sanitary measure can be shown to be a mere subterfuge. 
Many a crime, hurtful to the community, may be shielded 
by cremation, while humation renders it possible to in- 
spect the corpse, if need be, long after burial. Of course, 
the Church, under certain circumstances, could any day 
permit cremation ; but as she stands to-day, she prohibits 
it ; and no priest can absolve a dying Catholic who in- 
sists on his own post-mortem incineration. 

Salutary lessons maybe learned from contemplation on 



THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 



this suggestive subject — death, Christian burial, prayer for 
the faithful departed. We might endeavor to think more 
frequently and more kindly of the dead, to pray for them, 
to imitate the lives of the most virtuous. We might go, in 
spirit, to the grave of buried friendship and learn the sadly 
sweet lessons it can not fail to teach. Our fancy would 
place it in a Christian graveyard, where the cross stands at 
every mound, where the moonbeams fall brightly, like faith 
conquering doubt ; where, ever and anon, as the breeze 
sweeps by, making wistful melody, the voices of the dead 
seem speaking golden truths, or begging the charity of 
our golden prayers. Then shall we awake from our happy 
reverie, feeling better Christians, loving all the more him 
who said, I am the resurrection and the life," and crav- 
ing, all the more trustingly, for light perpetual on the 
souls of the faithful departed. 

In Pace Requiescant ! 



THE END. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Jan. 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

'( 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1606$ 
{724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




017 286 815 



